Ron Paul: Modern Copperhead

We have a problem here.

Of course, many of you know it already. But, I think the time has come to make it official: Ron Paul’s campaign for the Presidency now presents a serious challenge to those who love liberty and seek its preservation against the Islamist assault on our civilization. It is no longer sufficient to simply dismiss those who support him as a motley collection of nuts and morons. It’s not that I deny that many of them are – it’s just that nuts and morons get to vote too.

It is fashionable for conservatives to dismiss Ron Paul, citing his flat poll numbers – just a few percentage points in most polls. I believe this to be a mistake – not only are national polls worthless in assessing the results of individual primaries, but they also fail to consider support that polls – especially polls partisan primary polling – might fail to pick up. While there’s absolutely zero chance that Paul is going to win the Republican nomination, there is a very high probability that he will be able to raise enough money to remain in the race and get enough votes to continue to receive media coverage. Worse still, it is entirely possible that he will win a sufficient number of delegates to cause trouble during the Republican National Convention (even, say, thirty could be a serious annoyance and disruption) and that he will go on to run as a third party candidate. There is also, if Senator Clinton secures the Democratic nomination early, the possibility that the internet-savvy leftist nutroots might organize in order to give Paul the illusion of more support.

Of all opposing forces, fifth columnists are the hardest to defeat. And that is what makes Ron Paul such a serious threat – because he is nominally a “Republican” he gets to go up on stage with the serious candidates for the Republican nomination and to spew his garbage all over the stage.

Who is Ron Paul? For a name that we hear so often (at least online), I don’t think most of us know much about him. He’s been a member of Congress for twenty years. In that time, he’s failed to achieve a single item of note. Instead, he’s dedicated himself to fringe causes – such as abolishing the Federal Reserve and returning to the Gold Standard. In the meantime, he’s helped to ensure his own re-election in part by securing pork projects for his own district while maintaining his ideological purity by voting against them on final passage.

In short, in three decades in public life, Ron Paul has shown himself to be a nothing more than a kook politician noteworthy primarily for his uselessness and pointless lectures. He is, it must be conceded, a strange vessel to contain such support as he now commands.

So? Why have many chosen him? Simply put, because he’s the candidate who has managed to capture the imagination of a certain sort of person on the war. The thing to remember about Americans – and watching Democratic debates it is easy to forget – it is that they are an unusually patriotic people. Even many (though not all) of the people working to bring about the defeat of the United States in the War on Terrorism (and before that in the Vietnam War – and long before that in the Civil War) think of themselves as American patriots. What Ron Paul – and all of his declarations about George Washington, non-intervention, the Constitution, and so forth – offers is a way for some people to feel that they are patriotically seeking to bring about the defeat of the United States and the victory of its enemies in a war.

When the Copperhead Democrats sought to undermine the Union during the Civil War they, much like Ron Paul today, claimed that they were acting in the defense of the Constitution – which they accused Abraham Lincoln of destroying. Like Ron Paul, the leader of the Copperheads, Clement Vallandigham, railed against debt, taxation, and the loss of rights under the Constitution. Lincoln responding by having Vallandigham exiled to the Confederacy but, alas, I don’t think there’s any chance of President Bush handing Ron Paul a one-way ticket to Tehran.

Who does support Ron Paul? I am told that the “Don’t Tase Me, Bro” guy is one of his Legionaries. The base of his support, it is not at all difficult to conclude, is drawn from the vast ocean of “slight unmeritable men” about whom it is hard not to wonder, as Antony did of Lepidus in Julius Caesar whether it is really fitting, political power being divided such as it is, that they ought to have an equal share.

Obviously, individual political equality is a basis of modern democracy but, nonetheless, it is probably worth wondering why we ought to consider the beliefs and views of, for example, 9-11 Conspiracy Theorists to be of any merit at all. It is not really possible to reason with people who adhere to a worldview for entirely irrational reasons.

Whenever I see Ron Paul’s supporters, my mind flashes (though not for any pharmacological reason, I assure you) back to a time that I saw pro-drug crusader Marc Emery speak during the 2001 provincial election. Every time the man spoke his dirty and confused supporters – who uniformly reeked of pot – would scream their approval, even when he made statements (abolish welfare, radically cut taxes, and the like) which would not ordinarily meet with the approbation of dishevelled hippes. In each case, an unlikely figure was grabbed onto by a motley crowd of fringe fools because of the appeal of their position on a single issue. In one case, drugs and in this case the war.

But, we cannot simply dismiss the fringe. In that 2001 Election, the Marijuana Party got 3.2% of the vote across the Province of BC and that was without a galvanizing issue like a war. Well-organized kooks can cause problems. It is tempting to simply dismiss the 9-11 Truthers, the people who see Black Helicopters’ everywhere, and the rest of that crowd as irrelevant. But, sadly, they aren’t. Individually they don’t matter but, if they can gather in once place, they are… Well… A problem.