Ron
And Ron: Two Of
Capitalism’s Finest
By
Jason Miller
31 December,
2007
Countercurrents.org
“Capitalism is the legitimate racket of the ruling class.”
—Al
Capone
It
has taken Nuremberg-class war crimes, craven ineptitude by Congressional
Democrats, foreclosures on every other home in the neighborhood, and
a metaphorical gun to our heads when we fill our gas tanks, but growing
numbers of us US Americans are shedding our smug insularity.
“Ron
Paul in 2008” has become the mantra for untold millions who are
realizing that the establishment in the United States is an abomination
that needs to be torn down and replaced. Ostensibly, Dr. Paul is the
populist maverick we need to shake up the system and set our nation
on a path to sanity and viability. His political coffers are overflowing
with cash, almost none of which came from corporate or “special”
interests. He is principled and consistent. And his position on a number
of important issues aligns with the interests of the masses.
When he appeared
on Meet the Press on December 23rd, even Tim Russert, one of the system’s
most prominent cheerleading whores, couldn’t rattle him. It would
certainly have been difficult not to admire Paul’s frontal assault
on a number of the “sacred cows” that Russert and his ilk
in the mainstream media work so hard to defend.
Consider several of the broad-sides Paul leveled against our malignant
status quo:
[MR. RUSSERT:
Would you cut off all foreign aid to Israel?
REP. PAUL:
Absolutely.
REP. PAUL:
They don’t come here to attack us because we’re rich and
we’re free. They come and they, and they attack us because we’re
over there.
MR. RUSSERT:
“Because we’re over there.” And then you added this
on Tuesday: “But” al-qaeda has “determination. The
determination comes from being provoked.”
How have we, the United States, provoked al-Qaeda?
REP. PAUL:
Well, read what the lead–the ringleader says. Read what Osama
bin Laden said. We had, we had a base, you know, in Saudi Arabia that
was an affront to their religion, that was blasphemy as far as they
were concerned. We were bombing Iraq for 10 years, we were–we’ve
interfered in Iran since 1953. Our CIA’s been involved in the
overthrow of their governments. We’re bought right now in the
process of overthrowing that nation. We side more with Israel and Pakistan,
and, and they get annoyed with this. How would we react if we were on
their land–if they were on our land? We would be very annoyed,
and we’d be fighting mad.
MR. RUSSERT:
Do you think there’s an ideological struggle that Islamic fascists
want to take over the world?
REP. PAUL:
Oh, I think some, just like the West is wanting to do that all the time.
Look at the way they look at us. I mean, we’re in a, we’re
in a 130 countries. We have 700 bases. How do you think they proposed
that to their people, saying “What does America want to do? Are
they over here to be nice to us and teach us how to be good Democrats?”
REP PAUL:
….But the point is I’m not against the FBI investigation
in doing a proper role, but I’m against the FBI spying on people
like Martin Luther King. I’m against the CIA fighting secret wars
and overthrowing government and interfering…]
Amen to ending
over a hundred years of imperialistic foreign policy, breaking up the
military industrial complex, cutting off our financial and military
support of the genocidal squatters in Palestine, and reining in the
torturers and assassins in our “intelligence” community.
His pursuit of these goals is certainly an objectively sound reason
to support Ron Paul.
Yet despite
these highly laudable positions, Paul is potentially as treacherous
as the creatures of the system most of us have come to loathe. Compared
to opportunistic moneyed elites like Mitt Romney or Hillary Clinton,
Paul is indeed an alluring candidate.
However,
he has at least one very deep flaw which would almost certainly make
his presidency an unmitigated disaster for the poor and the working
class the world over:
Ron Paul
ardently supports the libertarian notions of laissez faire, free markets,
deregulation, and privatization. In an ironic and almost comical twist,
the imperialism, corporatism, and prefigurements of fascism he has so
accurately identified (and vowed to eradicate) are symptoms of monopoly
capitalism, a mature form of the system that his libertarian principles
would serve to buttress and amplify.
In “The
Shock Doctrine” Naomi Klein amply documents the widespread murder,
mayhem, and misery caused by implementing a libertarian economic doctrine
(as the United States facilitated under the tutelage of Milton Friedman
and his acolytes) throughout South America, Southeast Asia, Russia,
and China. Savage capitalism at its finest. And for evidence that it
CAN happen here (in our “enlightened” Western culture),
one need only look back to the Gilded Age and Dickensonian England.
Regardless
of how malformed it was due to the relentless pressure applied by the
United States via the nuclear arms race we initiated to break it and
our HUGE economic advantages, the Soviet Union represented a powerful
counter-balance to the forces of unrestrained capitalism. Upon its collapse,
the capitalists of the world united and set out to eliminate the hard
fought gains the working class had made throughout the Twentieth Century.
And Dr. Paul wants to hand those cynical bastards the keys to the kingdom
by dismantling what is left of government restraints on the bourgeoisie.
Contrary
to the agenda advanced by Ron Paul, “all government” is
not inherently evil. It is true that the federal government we have
now is an enemy to the masses in many respects. But Uncle Sam is not
our foe because he “over-regulates” the parasitic capitalists
who are raping the planet, “steals” our money through taxation,
or acts as a “nanny state” by providing what has become
a nominal safety net for the poor and elderly, as Paul suggests. He
is our adversary because he is looking out for the wealthy elite and
views people like you and me as disposable. In contrast to Lincoln’s
vision—“of the people, by the people and for the people,”
we have a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.
While Ron
Paul MIGHT be able to slay the dragons of the military industrial complex
and undue Zionist influence, his adherence to a “prehistoric”
form of capitalism has the potential to essentially eliminate what is
left of the rapidly eroding gains the working class and poor have made
over the last century.
Despite his
apparent opposition to the powers that be, a vote for Ron Paul is still
a vote for our continued enslavement by a system predicated on greed,
selfishness, and the prosperity of the few at the expense of the many.
In fact, unless by some miracle a viable candidate who opposes capitalism
actually emerges, the act of voting in our bourgeois democracy is little
more than a validation of our servitude.
So don’t
participate. Our ruling elite can’t mouth hollow platitudes about
democracy if they don’t have voters.
Jason
Miller is a recovering US American middle class suburbanite
who strives to remain intellectually free. He is Cyrano’s Journal
Online’s associate editor (http://www.bestcyrano.org/)
and publishes Thomas Paine’s Corner within Cyrano’s at http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/.
You can reach him at [email protected]
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