Radical Idealism

Dear Ron Paul Supporter,

Do you honestly believe that your candidate has a chance in hell of winning the primaries, much less the general elections? 

I could cite results from every reputable polling organization that show Ron Paul with less than 3% of the vote, but I have a feeling that you will find some reason for their bias, and point to the online polls that Ron Paul forums enthusiastically and systematically flood as evidence of his imminent triumph.  Dr Paul himself has repeatedly stated that his campaign is about the message - a message that most news commentators cannot understand, much less inform the public about.  Online communities make for good news quips, but the "archaic" gold standard, or the question of whether Ron Paul is an isolationist is far beyond what news commentators can be expected to understand.

Despite this, it is undeniable that the success of Ron Paul's campaign has been a surprise to just about everyone, and tapped into some hidden resource that few suspected of existing.  Perhaps it really is the power of the Internet, coupled with public discontent with the presidential administration and congressional incompetence.  Perhaps people are really uniting around a leader who offers radical new ideas rather than yet another personality cult.  Even if his current support base is just a fraction of what is to come, does it really amount to anything?

When the election is over a little less than a year from now, will any of it matter?  Ron Paul will probably face defeat in the first few primaries, and if he chooses to run on the Libertarian ticket, he will get the usual 1-3% of the vote.  What will all the millions he raised and all the hours his volunteers spent mean then?  Even if by some miracle, he were to win, it would be of little practical consequence.  Like all politicians, presidents wield their power by cutting deals and compromising left and right.  Without willingness to compromise on all his principles, President Paul will be lucky if he is not impeached in the first week.   

I am not saying that Ron Paul is the wrong candidate to support.  I am questioning the premise that radical political ideologies can or should be advocated through political campaigns.  This fact has been aptly demonstrated by the pathetic failure of the Libertarian Party over the last 30+ years.  The Left has been much better at recognizing the failure of explicitly Marxist political movements early in the 20th century, and successfully shifted the focus of American politics by establishing a firm foundation in academia and then infiltrating both major parties.

Whatever your particular political philosophy, it is not even that likely that Ron Paul is a great match for it.  Whether it is his anti-immigration views, his promise of saving social security, his blame-America foreign policy, his borderline theocratic positions, or his support for the state as such, he is unlikely to be a perfect fit for anyone.  Much of his success is in fact due to moderating or hiding the most radical aspects of his libertarianism, such as masking his support for free trade by his opposition to free-trade agreements, or his scapegoating of "illegal aliens seeking the fruits of your labor" as part of his plan to save Social Security.

An educational movement does not need to hide its radical views.  Sure, you might not raise five or six million dollars in a day, but the resources you do have will be spent on spreading ideas, rather than a name and a number in the polls.  Even an extra million votes is not going to make a bit of difference in the general election, but a thousand more students motivated to spread rational ideas on liberty can change the world. 

I am not telling you to remove that Ron Paul bumper sticker.  Just recognize the inherent limitations of radical political candidates in a two party democracy, and consider supporting educational organizations that will never have to compromise or hide their principles in order to spread their message.

[Follow up post.]

The next time you hear someone going on about the "right to vote," remind them than voting is not a right - it's a coercive power wielded by the voting minority over a society.  Rights denote the extent of action men may take without initiating force against others.  Voting is force, the power to compel others at the point of a gun.  Media campaigns that attempt to "rock the vote," are advocating putting guns in the hands of more people, usually those least motivated to make informed decisions about whom their ballots target.  The ultimate purpose of the democratic process is to redistribute the moral responsibility of the group with the most guns to the entire electorate.

Furthermore, even if your candidate does win, all you "win" is a bag of mixed promises which are not always likely to be kept, and even less likely to be actually achieved. In the 2006 general elections, the Democrats were sworn into power due to public discontent with Bush's policy in Iraq. Despite Democratic promises and their congressional majority, they have not enacted any of their promises. Whatever the reason, it is clear that electoral victory alone cannot guarantee the achievement of campaign promises, and certainly not from their power as individual politicians. Even the president has relatively limited power in a democratic system.

Some might argue that if everyone else evaluated voting in this manner, things might be different.  But the fact is that people do continue to vote by the tens of millions.

None of this is to say that electoral victories are meaningless or inconsequential, or that political activism is not important or practical.  Interventionist governments have a tremendous impact on our lives, and thanks to technologies like the Internet, we have more opportunities than ever to engage in intellectual and political activism.  However, of all the means we have to influence the political process, voting is one of the least effective, second perhaps, to swearing under your breath as you give away half your income to the state.

As a form of political activism, voting is not only ineffective, but is in fact a form of apathy. The value of any single vote is so infinitesimal that the sense of self-importance and influence in the political process that people get from participating in the electoral process is entirely illusory. Yet the illusion of participation excuses many people from taking real steps to influence policy by arguing for their ideas, writing letters, or supporting advocacy organizations.  The people who really make a difference are those who take far more intellectually challenging and uncertain measures than punching one of two buttons - they attempt to change the intellectual and philosophical climate of their society.

If you vote because of the psychological benefit it provides, such as a feeling of having met one's patriotic duty, there is nothing I can say to you.  But if you actually want to influence the political state of the country (and given that sad state, that is more crucial now than ever) it would be far more productive of your time to donate the resources you would have spent researching candidates, going to the polls, and even donating to candidates in more efficient ways. 

Washington lobbyists are very expensive, yet they can be more influential than the votes of millions of individuals, and they will argue for your cause regardless of which candidate is victorious.  Ultimately however, the fate of any society is shaped by the fundamental ideas of its intellectuals.  All the votes in the world are meaningless next to the fundamental ideas about society that shape policymakers actions. 

If you are concerned with the threat of theocracy, your enemy is not George W. Bush, but the aspiring theocrats teaching the next generation of policymakers, cashing in on the void left by the destruction of reason and science by modern philosophy.  If you are concerned with the threat of the welfare state, your enemy is not Ted Kennedy, but the intellectuals teaching the next generation of leaders that they do not have a right to their own life. 

Politicians are rarely capable of coming up with original ideas - they depend on the intellectual elite of a society for their initiatives.  As intellectual elite changes, so do the ideas they feed to politicians.

The Israeli government is trying to lure back some of the hundreds of thousands of Israeli expatriates with “tax breaks, employment and small business loans.”  The campaign is set to cost $36 million a year.  Israeli politicians must realize on some level that their best and brightest citizens are leaving in growing numbers because their grant experiment in utopian socialism has turned out to be a total failure.  What they failed to consider however, is that to the extent that the campaign is successful, it is will bring back the wrong kind of people: those who value a short-term bribe over freedom and entrepreneurship unhindered by the interventionist state.