Andrew Sullivan Endorses Ron Paul
Brian Doherty | December 17, 2007, 5:52pm
While I'm not entirely sure why the author of this encomium to Obama considers himself a conservative in the modern American context, Andrew Sullivan comes out at the Atlantic web site with a GOP endorsement for Ron Paul that very nicely sums up the Texas congressman's virtues.
Sullivan starts by praising him from having been right from the beginning on Iraq (unlike, cough cough, Sullivan himself, but let us welcome the prodigals). Then:
....the deeper reason to support Ron Paul is a simple one. The great forgotten principles of the current Republican party are freedom and toleration. Paul's federalism, his deep suspicion of Washington power, his resistance to government spending, debt and inflation, his ability to grasp that not all human problems are soluble, least of all by government: these are principles that made me a conservative in the first place. No one in the current field articulates them as clearly and understands them as deeply as Paul. He is a man of faith who nonetheless sees a clear line between religion and politics. More than all this, he has somehow ignited a new movement of those who love freedom and want to rescue it from the do-gooding bromides of the left and the Christianist meddling of the right. The Paulites' enthusiasm for liberty, their unapologetic defense of core conservative principles, their awareness that in the new millennium, these principles of small government, self-reliance, cultural pluralism, and a humble foreign policy are more necessary than ever - no lover of liberty can stand by and not join them.
He's the real thing in a world of fakes and frauds. And in a primary campaign where the very future of conservatism is at stake, that cannot be ignored. In fact, it demands support.
Go Ron Paul!
tarran | December 17, 2007, 8:45pm | #
When the constitution was written, I believe there were several states with incompatible state religions.
Massachusetts, for example, had tax-payer funded protestant churches, and a public school system to indoctrinate children into the state religion.
In Vermont there was also a religious requirement for holding government office.
I belive Maryland was a Catholic state.
The first amendment was an attempt to prevent the Federal Govt becoming a battleground for religious control of other states. It was intended to be a sort of live and let-live policy. Furthermore, while Thos Jefferson did (correctly IMHO) did identify the church and state as being a pernicious combination, there were many who did think that the U.S. should have chaplains serving in the military etc.
Does Ron Paul wish to establish a white Christian nation as some allege? Clearly no. I have listened to several of his interviews, and he has said things such as,
"An abortion ban would probably be legally unenforceable"
" A compassionate society should rejoice that we have developed drugs that can help those in severe pain, rather than demonize those drugs because a tiny minority abuses them."
"If we had a healthy economy, there would be little political pressure to keep out immigrants; people would welcome them."
Honestly, a Federal Government adopting Ron Paul's political prescriptions would be such a great improvement over what we have now, that I would welcome his election, even though I am an anarchist and view Ron Paul as yet another piece of statist scum, a crime-boss-wannabee.
Arkady | December 18, 2007, 3:19am | #
Neu Mejican --
I'm honestly not trying to deploy the "nuh-unh!/yuh-huh!" method of argumentation here, but do you have citations for the bills where Ron Paul took all the apparently anti-choice stances you're describing? Because -- and I repeat, I'm not trying to be a dick about it -- some, though not all, of the one-sentence things you've posted (
"Voted YES on banning gay adoptions in D.C. (1999)") sound a little like context-free talking points to me.
It reminds me a bit (and I'm paraphrasing) of the attack ad last fall against the legislator whose vote to renew NIH funding translated into a "[vote] to fund a study of the reading habits of cross-dressing Eskimos" (or something like that), since
obviously "voting to fund NIH" == "support for every study conducted by anyone remotely connected to NIH". So do you know, did RP actually vote to ban gay adoptions in DC, or just vote against an act wherein one of the fifteen titles would have required all adoption agencies in the District to accept applications from gay couples?
Now, obviously RP's got more conservative religious beliefs than I do. But even if you can find all the bills you describe and they're unambiguously anti-choice, my pro-gay-marriage, pro-choice vote will still be going to Ron Paul. That's partly because I'm sanguine about the prospects for my preferred policies -- I see equitable treatment for gay unions as just a matter of time (whether that means gay marriages being recognized by the state or that governments would leave the marriage business altogether, I don't know), and I think that an America where
Roe was overturned would probably be an America with safer abortion rights.
Furthermore, though, I'm still not convinced that Ron Paul has/would have a) the desire to force his religion on people, b) the ability to do so if elected president, c) the willingess to exercise that ability if he has it, or d) the willingness to arrogate that ability to himself if he doesn't. Plus things like
this and
this go a long way towards alleviating any fears I might have.
