A number of near-libertarian friends of mine (hi!) have been insisting to me that Ron Paul has the right stance on many issues. So I thought I'd take a look at his website and see.

As I peruse the high-level descriptions linked from his "Issues" page, I'm reminded that last time I looked at Obama's web site I found it mostly agreeable too: I wouldn't have guessed, at that time (it's gotten more honestly liberal since then) that I was visiting the website of the Senate's farthest-left member.

So I don't see anything hugely un-conservative about his "debt and taxes" page, which is written in the same kind of high-level language in which most candidates tell us they love puppies, families, and freedom. So far so good.

Free Trade

But we start running into trouble on the next link: American Independence and Sovereignty. I agree about the World Court (of course) and all that, but...

Ron hates NAFTA and apparently thinks it's anti-free-trade. I tend to think tarriff reductions are closer to "free trade", but hey, what would I know? I'm just a consistent conservative type who thinks more trade is better.

He also blithely propagates the myth about the fictional "NAFTA superhighway", which is debunked, among other places, here:

Myth: The U.S. Government, working though the SPP, has a secret plan to build a "NAFTA Super Highway."

Fact: The U.S. government is not planning a NAFTA Super Highway. The U.S. government does not have the authority to designate any highway as a NAFTA Super Highway, nor has it sought such authority, nor is it planning to seek such authority. There are private and state level interests planning highway projects which they themselves describe as "NAFTA Corridors," but these are not Federally-driven initiatives, and they are not a part of the SPP.

Unless someone can prove the above wrong: It scares me to see someone so ill-informed on national policy (while being outspoken) running for President. And I don't see what's scary, per se, about a highway to Mexico, anyway -- provided it's policed no worse than other existing routes and doesn't mess with private property any more than any other road we've built.

NAFTA’s superhighway is just one part of a plan to erase the borders between the U.S. and Mexico, called the North American Union...

Err, hmmm??? To these ears, Ron is coming across as a blithering nut-job by saying such things. How would a road erase borders? And a ROAD ain't gonna establish an American equivalent of the EU. Is his phrasing careless? Or this rendering -- scarier still -- an accurate reflection of how his train of thought proceeds?

We must withdraw from any organizations and trade deals that infringe upon the freedom and independence of the United States of America.

While I agree in general with the broader thrust of this statement, it's utterly meaningless. All agreements "infringe freedom." I give up an absolute right to do and say whatever I want all day in return for a paycheck. And all trade deals are like that, also: You drop your barriers to entry, and we'll drop ours. As long as we don't end up agreeing some hypothetical world government has the right to come in and arrest us directly for violations (and I don't think any of the Republican candidates are up for that), such deals are only meaningful as long as we decide to honor them. Just like my employment.

So in the end, Ron Paul, the alleged free-market conservative, is spewing semi-leftist tripe about the evils of free trade agreements and roads. Sigh.

War and Foreign Policy

Here again Ron finds himself firmly aligned with the left. I don't mean in his position (though that appears somewhat similar) but in the level of honesty in his rhetoric. In fact, he repeats the same tendentious talking points the left uses:

The war in Iraq was sold to us with false information... This war has cost more than 3,000 American lives, thousands of seriously wounded, and hundreds of billions of dollars. We must have new leadership in the White House to ensure this never happens again.

While even a small amount of incorrect information (such as that from "Curveball") would render Paul's precise phrasing correct, such assertions are, nonetheless, deceptive -- implying, as they do in this political environment, that Bush knew this information was mostly false.

And if Ron Paul wants to "make sure it never happens again" that we depose a dictator who has already invaded several neighbors, attempted to assassinate a sitting US president, and whom ALL the world's intel organizations said was trying to acquire WMD -- well, then he strikes me as being as foolish as Dennis Kucinich.

(Or is it just that if we would have left the mideast alone, Saddam wouldn't today control Kuwait and Saudi Arabia -- and be making moves to threaten war with Israel? Since he seems to be implying that, I think it's a reasonable question.)

Next, he plays on his audience's historical ignorance (or perhaps merely exposes his own, if he really believes this):

Both Jefferson and Washington warned us about entangling ourselves in the affairs of other nations. Today, we have troops in 130 countries. We are spread so thin that we have too few troops defending America... No war should ever be fought without a declaration of war voted upon by the Congress, as required by the Constitution.

I agree that we should withdraw some of our troops from other nations (though probably for entirely different reasons that Ron Paul would offer). But his use of Jefferson and Washington here is simply wrong: Jefferson himself deployed the Marines to Tripoli, where they seized that nation's government. Oh, and all that was done without a Declaration of War.

Jefferson didn't violate the Constitution -- he simply knew what was in it. Unlike Ron Paul. (The Constitution simply outlines how to declare war -- nowhere does it prohibit us from sending troops abroad without such a declaration.) By Ron Paul's own reasoning, he should be arguing against Jefferson as a potential despot -- not invoking his image.

Given a sufficiently convincing argument (omitted here, apparently) I could possibly be persuaded that a Declaration of War might be a better move than the post-WWII trend of only "authorizing force". Yet the one offering such should demonstrate at least a basic understanding of US history, and the historical interpretation of the Constitution regarding the use of force abroad. And Paul's invocation of "Jefferson" in this context is too absurd for words.

Under no circumstances should the U.S. again go to war as the result of a resolution that comes from an unelected, foreign body, such as the United Nations.

Sigh. Must Paul get everything wrong? We didn't go to war as a result of that resolution (excuse me, those many resolution) -- we weren't compelled to do so in the slightest. We went to war because Bush thought it would be the right thing to do, and because Congress authorized use of force. And the UN resolutions themselves were only restatements of the US's former concerns about Iraq.

Had he said something different: like the UN was harmful, or those resolutions were wrong -- he'd have my respect still. But the statement he actually offers here is simply a lie: the US was in no way compelled by the UN to go into Iraq. (The case was quite the opposite: people argue we shouldn't have gone in because we didn't have explicit UN authorization. Or did Ron miss that part of the debate?)

I have no respect for those who rewrite history, even subtly like this (or perhaps, especially subtly, like this) -- they scare me more than any other class of people.

Foreign Aid

Too often we give foreign aid and intervene on behalf of governments that are despised. Then, we become despised. Too often we have supported those who turn on us, like the Kosovars who aid Islamic terrorists, or the Afghan jihads themselves, and their friend Osama bin Laden. We armed and trained them, and now we’re paying the price.

I'm entirely good with giving less foreign aid -- I've advocated less foreign aid many a-time. And anyone who reads my blog knows full well how much I hate "Realpolitik", in which we blindly support awful dictators. And I've even argued we should utterly boycott dictatorships like China and Cuba.

But Ron is going much further, and drawing a series of false connections here. He implies we are despised primarily because we have, at times, supported bad governments. Really? Let's get serious: the world loves Palestine over Israel. Which is better and more democratic? Which do we support? The world generally hates the US more than China, and effectively favored Hitler over most of Eastern Europe -- even as influential elements in the US and Europe said Hitler's actions were justified by the terms of Versailles. Ron Paul is a moral idiot if he thinks world opinion follows and approves of those who act morally. Yet that's precisely what he's saying here.

World opinion clearly stood up for Saddam in this most recent contest between him and the US. So was the US despised in that context because we supported Saddam briefly during the Iran/Iraq war? Let's not be foolish: the French, Germans, and Russia lent far more support in recent times -- and yet were still morally preening before the international community.

Had we not supported Saddam to that tiny (and I mean tiny) extent, it would have made absolutely no difference: France's position was determined by a stead stream of stolen oil-for-food money and a promised trillion-dollar oil contract; Russia and Germany's stances were determined by the fact they'd been arming that bastard; China always opposes US interests when it's an option, and Spain's populace has deeply hated the US since at least the 1980s. (And has the moral sensibility to do whatever terrorists tell them after a good bombing or two.)

Conversely, we're mostly hated in the very "good" countries we've supported: though we seem to have experienced a recent upturn (thank God), France, whom who we rescued from Hitler and protected from Stalin, has famously despised us. So has Germany as of late. And we're deeply hated in South Korea, which currently has more affection for Pyongyang (presumably, applying Ron Paul's logic, because they must act more morally than we do).

There's no room for such stunning naivete in public office, much less the Presidency. I expect that kind of polyanna attitude from the left, not someone who claims to be a more sober "conservative". The traditional conservative case for isolation was always that we should stay out of other countries because we were too good for them. Ron Paul has apparently ingested, and is regurgitating, the liberal inversion of that argument.

This strikes me as a sign of someone who's only comfortable being in a position of opposition, and has no affirmative ideas or solutions. Stay out of it, get rid of the current leadership, and all will be well in some vague, unspecified way. As if al Qaeda wouldn't have built their bases in Somalia instead of Aghanistan, and as if Saddam hadn't been training terrorists at Salman Pak, and as if Islamists wouldn't still have hated us for allowing our women to attend church dances, and for our continuing support of Israel?

(Or shouldn't we be supporting Israel either, Mr. Paul, given the massive unpopularity that earns us? How nice to have the luxury of being so vague. It's not like you have to hold public office or something. Unlike a mere blogger like myself. Oh wait: It appears *I'm* offering the more detailed and nuanced view of the world, here. How very, very scary.)

Privacy, Liberty, and Property Rights

On privacy, he seems again confused: do we need more or less government intervention?

Under so-called "medical privacy protection" rules, insurance companies and other entities have access to your personal medical information.

Umm, that's because the free market allows them to -- that's why. The same reason your phone company can sell your call records. One minute he says he thinks the government is the biggest threat -- the next minute he's implying it should be used to tell companies exactly how to use the information they can gather. One would like to know the guiding philosophy here.

Though he spends half a page on a version of the Patriot Act which was never passed, he spends two sentences on the Kelo decision, which actually does apply today -- and then quickly reverts to ranting about the "NAFTA Superhighway" again!

And, more annoyingly, I noticed he again repeats liberal talking points -- saying the Patriot Act "required libraries and bookstores to turn over records of books read", but not mentioning that a warrant is required. (What, does he believe this information should unavailable even with a warrant?)

Again, though I'd agree broadly on some of this points here, his focus seems unbalanced, and I'm again troubled by his causal deployment of the same misleading rhetoric the left dishes up.

Other Issues

On other domestic issues, Ron Paul seems to get it mostly right. He agrees we need to secure the border (which should be a no-brainer for any politician, but isn't). And, as I mentioned above, we both agree the US needs to cut taxes and spending. (Yet he doesn't propose reforming the tax system, oddly.)

Noticably, he says nothing here about standard conservative social issues: Where is he on abortion? How about embryonic stem cell research? Would he ban cloning? What's his view of marriage? (Is it merely a matter of private contract? With what limits?) Are we just supposed to believe he favors whatever view we'd like to imagine?

Summary

Ron Paul gets it fairly right fiscally. But he doesn't apparently think social policy is worth commenting upon -- even if only to elaborate it should fall to the states. (I'm just guessing.) Regarding free trade, he seems worried about agreements to reduce tarriffs on imports. (So he wants tarriffs, then? ) He fears highways. And regardless of whether I agree or disagree with his international policies (which were stunningly vague), I feel the few examples offered betray a frightening naivte -- and ignorance of US history and the Constitution, to boot.

And, worse, he seems content to repeat some of the worst myths of the left, without subjecting them to serious scrutiny -- or perhaps he even believes them, for what might be the same reasons.

Color me unimpressed.