Has Glenn Greenwald drunk the Ron Paul Kool-Aid?

George Wallace, blocking the door to the University of Alabama; "Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation for-evah": Ole George was a nonconformist outside the mainstream consensus, too

I'm beginning to think he has. Dave Neiwert has provided another round-up of Paul's far-right, and I mean really far-right, record in Congress, Ron Paul's record in Congress Orcinus blog 11/11/07. The text of his post is something he elevated from the comments to a previous post, by a commenter called Trefayne, who Neiwert gives full credit for his research.

Greenwald responds to that post with a spirited defense of his "principled conservative" flaming rightwing hardliner Ron Paul, Ron Paul distortions and smears Salon 11/12/07.

Frankly, I'm gobsmacked by Greenwald's attitude on this. He does some great work on the many faults of the Cheney-Bush administration and does some of the best analysis of the self-blinding conventional wisdom and institutional conservatism of the Establishment press.

But if he can't tell a hardcore Old Right isolationist like Ron Paul for what he is, what is he really hoping to see happen in American politics?

I want to say something in particular about Greenwald's approach in that particular post. If you look through the Neiwert/Trefayne post, you'll see that Trefayne addresses Paul's far-right record on women's right to choose on abortion, gay rights, family planning of any sort, basic labor rights, workplace safety, the minimum wage, Social Security, minority voting, antitrust, business regulations of all sorts, immigration, anti-discrimination laws, environmental protection, nuclear proliferation, international law, international treaties and agreements, the United Nations, even taking over the Panama Canal for the love of Zeus, gun violence, education, taxes, the gold standard (the Holy Grail of Bircher types, though only Athena knows why), the Federal Reserve, maybe even abolishing the national currency.

I mean, this ain't rocket science. It's not even political science. Somebody whose political program is to turn back the clock to the days of William McKinley, or more accurately, to an Ayn Randish dystopian fantasy version of the McKinley days, is not a liberal. And is not serious about peace. And is an enemy of all working people. And whose only concept of freedom is freedom for the rich to rip off everyone they can in some Bircher hell of Social Darwinism.

Even thinking about this stuff gives me creepy flashbacks to my earlier days in Mississippi, suddenly finding myself in a conversation with someone who doesn't have the most rudimentary grasp of democratic government or a free society in a post-medieval world. I mean, what can you say? About the same thing you can say to someone who believes that what they hear about the Iraq War on FOX News bears some significant relationship to reality. In other words, nothing that can change the minds of someone who can take a crackpot framework like that seriously. (Just to be clear: you certainly don't have to go to Mississippi to experience this!)

What is Greenwald's response to the Neiwert/Trefayne post? Well, he points out that Paul only introduced a Constitutional Amendment to ban flag-burning because he is totally opposed to any laws against flag-burning. Say what? I feel the flashbacks coming on... "So, you say you're totally opposed to any changes to segregation because you're really, really committed to the well-being of black people? Oookay..." "You really love the Confederate flag because you're such a patriotic American. I see..." "You're going to vote for George Bush because John Kerry isn't antiwar enough? Rii-iight..."

I mean, this kind of up-is-down nutso posturing is common as dirt on the crackpot rightwing. And increasingly in the mainstream Republican Party, as Greenwald himself has documented on numerous occasions.

The most generous thing I can think of to say about Greenwald's political crush on Ron Paul is that he really doesn't seem to understand how fringe rightwingers operate. For instance, he says:

For a long time now, I've heard a lot of people ask: "where are the principled conservatives?" - meaning those on the Right who are willing to oppose the constitutional transgressions and abuses of the Bush administration without regard to party loyalty. A "principled conservative" isn't someone who agrees with liberals on most issues; that would make them a "principled liberal." A "principled conservative" is someone who aggressively objects to the radicalism of the neocons and the Bush/Cheney assault on our constitution and embraces a conservative political ideology. That's what Ron Paul is, and it's hardly a surprise that he holds many views anathema to most liberals. That hardly makes him a "fruitcake."

First of all, for most of us, "where are the principled conservatives?", has been pretty much a rhetorical question for a number of years now. Some of the people who I assume would fit into that category in some way - John Dean, Scott Ritter, Brent Scowcroft, Pat Lang, Anthony Cordesman, Andrew Bacevich - having been speaking out for years on the Cheney-Bush administration's reckless, unprincipled, lawless foreign policy and one many of the domestic outrages like the unlimited spying.

But even by the degraded standards of today's Republican Party, Ron Paul's program is not conservative. It's radical rightwing. He may be as principled as Ayn Rand. But his politics are Old Right isolationist, antilabor, dogmatic "free-market" fantasy politics.

Yes, established orders of all sorts are inclined to stigmatize ideas that are outside their consensus of accepted opinions as kooky or sinister. And some substantial, well-founded ideas are unfairly stigmatized in that way.

But the converse is not true, i.e., that all ideas stigmatized by the established order (fairly or unfairly) are substantial and well-founded. There are plenty of nonconformist, unconventional ideas that are just plain bad. Creationism is outside the conventional wisdom of science for good reason, because it's not science. Fake cancer-cures are opposed by the proponents of "school medicine" and they should be, because the people who peddle such things are some of the worst vampires around. Christian dominionists are stigmatized as extremists and fanatics by mainstream Christians and supporters of democracy because Christian dominionists promote bad Christian theology and are opposed to democracy.

I actually sympathize with those who seek to protect "sex workers" (prostitutes) from the most dangerous situations. But I don't recommend that anyone consider prostitution as a career alternative. Greenwald's argument on that point is just sophomoric reasoning. Amazingly so, but it is.

And to this paragraph...

That isn't to say that nobody can ever be deemed extremist or even crazy. But I've heard Ron Paul speak many times now. There are a lot of views he espouses that I don't share. But he is a medical doctor and it shows; whatever else is true about him, he advocates his policies in a rational, substantive, and coherent way - at least as thoughtful and critical as any other political figure on the national scene, if not more so. As the anti-Paul New York Sun noted today, Paul has been downright prescient for a long time in warning about the severe devaluation of the dollar.

... I can only say, what the [Cheney]? Gee, he sounds like a nice man. He's smart, and sounds reasonable when he advocates eliminating all legal rights for workers, and dumping the United Nations and all arms-control treaties, and, and, and.

It reminds me of an anti-apartheid activist I knew back in the days when apartheid still existed in South Africa, a young American white woman from a very affluent family. She spent a summer in South Africa and came back thinking apartheid was a dandy idea because all the nice white folks she met there explained things to her so reasonably.

Is Glenn Greenwald really this much of a babe in the woods when it comes to a far-right crackpot's candidacy?

In any case, you want to see what the Ron Paul Neanderthal Third Party pitch will look like next year? That post of Greenwald's is a great example. Oh, that wicked Hillary Clinton, she's a big old flip-flopper just like all the Republicans and the TV pundits say she is. You can't trust her. Ron Paul's the real deal. And, yeah, he doesn't agree with everything those sissy liberals say, but who in their right mind would? He's principled, and he's against the Iraq War. So vote for Ron Paul, not the Democrats, and put Benito Giuliani in the White House!

This is the situation that all third parties in the US face. As long as we have winner-take-all electoral districts, the only way a third party can establish itself is to become one of the two big parties. That means cannibalizing the votes of one of the two current main parties until it's effectively destroyed. And to do that, you have to be prepared to go for 20 years or so with the other party dominant.

I'm not ready for that. And I'm not ready ever for a rightwing zealot like Ron Paul - "principled" or otherwise - to set the direction of federal policy.

Tags: authoritarianism, glenn greenwald, ron paul