Matt Johnson

*Originally published in Political Fiber, August 10, 2012

Last Wednesday, my editor published a disheartening reminder on this website: Ron Paul isn’t going away.

In one sense, this is a dismal reminder of how frivolous American politics can be. Though some of his supporters fancy themselves “revolutionaries,” Ron Paul is one of the most reactionary candidates in recent history, and he should be consigned to obscurity as soon as possible.

On the other hand, his continued relevance gives me the opportunity to write this article without being impertinent. Ron Paul’s legions of defenders may regret their inflexibility in the coming years, but it’s starting to seem unlikely. Self-satisfaction and wishful thinking are stubborn bedfellows.

Here’s a glimpse of Congressman Paul’s ideal world:

Osama bin Laden would still be alive and the CIA would be dead. The United States would no longer be a member of NATO or the United Nations. Federal foreign aid for the victims of disasters such as the Asian, Haitian, and Japanese earthquakes would be rescinded (even AIDS prevention programs in Africa would get the doctor’s axe). The Iranian nuclear weapons program would be given an idiotic American blessing. Iraq would still be privately held by a band of murderers and sadists, and they’d have Kuwait under their bloody heels. Bosnia and Kosovo would have been ethnically cleansed and absorbed by a Greater Serbia. American aircraft would not have protected innocent civilians in Libya. And our present conversation about Syria would be reduced to a series of sighs and shoulder shrugs.

These are the doctor’s orders? Ron Paul’s vision for the United States is dank, self-serving rot masquerading as “freedom.”

The freedom that Ron Paul advocates is the freedom to deny the very existence of international obligations. It’s the freedom to abandon our allies and help our enemies. It’s the freedom to permit genocide, sectarian madness, and mass suffering without even a hint of self-criticism. And it’s a freedom available only to Americans – other countries be damned.

In an increasingly interconnected world, Congressman Paul wants the United States to recede.

His voice hoarsens with hysterical shrieks about the impending one-world government (via the ever-treacherous United Nations). He constantly reiterates the importance of avoiding “foreign entanglements.” In his 2011 speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, he said, “We need to do a lot less a lot sooner, not only in Egypt but around the world.”

On June 19, 2012, he gave a preposterous, incoherent speech about Syria on the House floor. In it, he makes the following assertions:

1) “Without outside interference, the strife – now characterized as a civil war – would likely be nonexistent.”

2) The United States is lying about Russian support for Assad – “Falsely charging the Russians with supplying military helicopters to Assad is an unnecessary provocation.”

As any fool will notice, both claims are completely fallacious.

First, Paul echoes the transparent propaganda of President Bashar al-Assad by blaming external forces for most of the violence in Syria. As noted by the United Nations and the Red Cross the Syrian crisis is now a civil war and outside forces are playing only a marginal role. Second, the MV Alaed did, in fact, attempt to deliver a shipment of anti-aircraft systems and Mi-8 helicopters to Syria.

Perhaps Paul was merely referring to the fact that the helicopters weren’t outfitted with weapons. Victor Litovkin, a Russian military analyst, had this to say about the Mi-8s: “They can be made into military helicopters on the spot: it is possible to install a machine gun or cartridges for unguided missiles. But this is the decision and responsibility of the buyer of the equipment.” Dr. Paul may want to bear this in mind: Syria has no shortage of machine guns and missiles.

However, while his aversion to American interventionism is enormously misguided, it’s not completely indefensible. His stance on foreign aid is. How anyone with even the vaguest sense of human solidarity could oppose federal relief to Africa or countries ravaged by natural disasters is beyond comprehension.

In a GOP debate last November, Wolf Blitzer asked Ron Paul about foreign aid to fight malaria and AIDS in Africa. He gave a characteristically callous, bewildering response, “I think all the aid is worthless.”

According to their report in the Annals of Internal Medicine, Stanford University researchers don’t agree. President George W. Bush’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) saved 1.2 million lives from 2004 to 2007. It must take the most unwavering self-assurance to face a statistic like that, wave it off, and say, “Worthless.”