[Stealth3si]

I was reading Amazon reviews of Ron Paul's "The Revolution: A Manifesto' looked very interesting. Something I'd give as a gift to a friend. Has anyone read his book and is it really that good? BTW, I decided to look up his "books" because someone on CGR had a Ron Paul banner. Figured Dr. Paul would be an "ideal candidate" for the Christian community I suppose (?) since I'm not that really political.

[Chrysostom]

Depends on what you mean by an ideal candidate for Christians, I suppose. He believes in a limited, responsible government, and is a very firm believer in America and the Founding Fathers. He makes clear campaign promises and his voting record consistently upholds them. He supports individual "liberty" -- i.e., the ability to do whatever you want as long as you don't "hurt" somebody else. He strongly opposes any government action he believes oppress the poor and minorities. He's not much of a believer in the "Culture War" and would leave all decisions on matters of homosexual marriage and abortion up to the states. He is also uninterested in the War On Islam, instead pointing his finger at American foreign policy and telling us to get our own affairs in order.

So I suspect that certain Christian groups would find his foreign policy unthinkable, and others would be angry that he won't get the social Constitutional amendments that they want. Most will love his loyalty to the US, some will find his loyalties divided. Personally, I love his sincerity and his commitment to battling systemic prejudice/oppression against minorities and the poor, but cannot stand his view of liberty.

[Jeffrey]

Originally Posted by Chrysostom

but cannot stand his view of liberty.

What's your beef with having the non-aggression axiom as a foundation for a secular government? I've read your past discussions about the extreme individualism that you think leads to individual isolation, but I've always been amused by that because folks like Ron Paul tend to be very involved in their community, and only advocate individualism as a basis for what a government should seek to preserve for its citizens.

I don't think Ron Paul is presenting his view of liberty as what Christians should seek in regards to the church community, and since you've in the past repudiated the post-millenialism that says Christians should fight for theocracy, I'm not sure what your reservations are about Ron Paul conservatism.

[Stealth3si]

Originally Posted by Chrysostom

Depends on what you mean by an ideal candidate for Christians, I suppose.

I think what I mean by "ideal candidate" is to vote for Ron Paul in the next election. Maybe that also depends upon the Christian's political philosophy .

Originally Posted by Chrysostom

He supports individual "liberty" -- i.e., the ability to do whatever you want as long as you don't "hurt" somebody else.

This is the fundamental ethic in the West that you were talking about in the other thread. Other than its rugged individualism, I'd be interested to briefly hear what else you have to say on this view of liberty. On a side note, to me, it appears to be similar to how game theories were philosophically and ethically applied as a strategy during the Cold War to advocate "individual freedom and equality in society," but has paradoxically broken down to "isolation." Have you heard of it? Maybe that's where this Western fundamental ethic came from (?) I'm not sure. Interesting anyway.

Originally Posted by Chrysostom

He strongly opposes any government action he believes oppress the poor and minorities. He's not much of a believer in the "Culture War" and would leave all decisions on matters of homosexual marriage and abortion up to the states.

Probably for marijuana too. I use to live in California where medicinal marijuana is still legal. And thanks for your answer I'll read his book with a grain of salt.

Originally Posted by Jeffrey

and since you've in the past repudiated the post-millenialism that says Christians should fight for theocracy.

I'd like to see those posts if you remember them. BTW, it would seem Ron Paul's radical philosophies would favor a theocracy?

[Jeffrey]

I don't think Ron Paul wants theocracy by any stretch.

[Chrysostom]

Originally Posted by Jeffrey

What's your beef with having the non-aggression axiom as a foundation for a secular government?

It's not that I'm necessarily opposed to non-aggression (though to define even political right-and-wrong this way seems to me not only practically incoherent but fairly dubious because it is based on this particular view of liberty). My problem is the view that freedom is about doing whatever you want (this is Ockham's view of freedom), rather than becoming great (Aquinas's view of freedom). This view is at the base of the story that's behind the American political system: Everybody has different desires and so everybody's liberty is being destroyed by others (read: the so-called Wars Of Religion), so we have the State to be the public space (everything else is in the realm of the private individual) through which people can be mediated and reconciled.

There are plenty of things I think are wrong with this. I'll just try to number off a few.

1. It uses the category "nature" for the mythological "state of nature" in which everybody is by nature violent to each other. This is fundamentally anti-Christian, both because we believe in original peace and because we believe in creation out of nothing and therefore don't believe there is such a thing as "nature" (which comes from the notion of eternally-existent matter).

2. It uses the category "nature" to define "public" discourse. Using a grammar defined by terms like "light of nature," "natural rights," and "objective reasoning," it makes a belief in "nature" a prerequisite for having a voice. But if we accept "nature" then we've stopped being Christians.

3. I could say a lot about its public/private dichotomy, but the first thing I'll say is that this dichotomy created the (modern) category "religion" and labels Christianity the foremost exemplar thereof. But this "religion" is of the heart and the individual conscience; it is the kind of thing that is tamed and thereby compartmentalized so that it can be no threat to State power. This "religion" follows the Enlightened belief in Progress -- "primitive" religions are earthy and ritualistic but "civilized" religions are more "spiritual." But acceptance of Progress is anti-Christian, and "religion" is anti-Christian because it is anti-Incarnational. We are irreducibly committed to ritual and to a unity between "matter" and "spirit."

4. It is a legitimate interpretation, to my mind, to say (as Paul does) that anything the State does is a constraint on (his version of) Liberty. That constraint is supposed to be accepted at the core of the social contract -- I give away a little bit of Liberty to the State to secure more than I've got in the State Of Nature. Once the State has been accepted as Mediator and Savior, and once the State dominates that which is Public space, it cannot help but continue to consolidate power, in part because it needs that power to better mediate and save everybody, and in part because it's (increasingly) the only thing that can truly act in the Public realm. This means that the logic behind this politics necessitates the totalitarianism of the State (contra Paul's hopes for limited government), because the State is God.

Or, to put it another way, my beef is with secular government itself. (Continued below.)

Originally Posted by Jeffrey

I don't think Ron Paul is presenting his view of liberty as what Christians should seek in regards to the church community, and since you've in the past repudiated the post-millenialism that says Christians should fight for theocracy, I'm not sure what your reservations are about Ron Paul conservatism.

I do think that we should be fighting for theocracy, just nothing like the theocracy that the theocrats are out there trying to get. The problem is that they believe in America and they believe in the principles of government I mentioned above, and they just want to get Christians into office in order to run things the Christian way. But we believe not in the Pax Americana or the Pax Romana -- we believe in the Pax Christi. Sure, we've been told that the Kingdom of God is in a different category from politics (except insofar as we try to vote for "good, moral" policies, relying on an Ethics Of Nature), but that is only true if we believe in this State and its public/private dichotomy. When we say Jesus is Lord we're telling all the powers and principalities of any stripe that Jesus defines what is public and they are walking on his turf now, like it or not.

So the problem with the theocrats is, in my mind, that they mistake the theocracy of the Kingdom of God for some revolutionary Christian coup of the US government. Almost paradoxically, only when we believe in the Kingdom of God instead of America can we be trusted with government rule. Until then we'll just be advocating Constitutional amendments that express our impotent homophobia.

Originally Posted by Stealth3si

I think what I mean by "ideal candidate" is to vote for Ron Paul in the next election. Maybe that also depends upon the Christian's political philosophy .

That's what I meant.. There are different things he stands for that are popular among some Christians and unpopular among others. He has integrity, which all Christians like. Everything else varies between groups.

Originally Posted by Stealth3si

This is the fundamental ethic in the West that you were talking about in the other thread. Other than its rugged individualism, I'd be interested to briefly hear what else you have to say on this view of liberty.

Unfortunately I don't have time to say much more than I've already posted above. But I'll give you one teaser -- as Bertrand Russell argued many decades ago, under this view of liberty marriage and even the raising of children become unintelligible.

Originally Posted by Stealth3si

On a side note, to me, it appears to be similar to how game theories were philosophically and ethically applied as a strategy during the Cold War to advocate "individual freedom and equality in society," but has paradoxically broken down to "isolation." Have you heard of it?

Could you explain this more?

Originally Posted by Stealth3si

Probably for marijuana too. I use to live in California where medicinal marijuana is still legal.

He would legalize drugs.

Originally Posted by Stealth3si

BTW, it would seem Ron Paul's radical philosophies would favor a theocracy?

Very much not so, actually. He believes we all stand on some sort of common, public ground, and while there is a vague American civil religion in there somewhere he is extremely supportive of religious Liberty.

[Stealth3si]

Originally Posted by Chrysostom

Could you explain this more?

The idea is that the paranoid theories hatched during the cold war would come to inspire a peculiar, cold-hearted idea of personal freedom - one that may help explain everything from the rise of Prozac and Viagra to Labour's obsession with healthcare targets, from the military crusades of George Bush and the rise of the Iraqi insurgency to the rampant diagnosis of attention deficit disorder in children.

This is an audacious hypothesis though coming Adam Curtis's documentary, "The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom," which argues that we have unwittingly subscribed to a bleak ideal of liberty that has, ironically, "become our cage", reducing our true freedom and fuelling a dramatic rise in inequality.

Now I would take that with a grain of salt as it may come off like "right-wing propaganda." But, like I said before, it does appear to me to have an allusive commonality with your view of the "individual liberty" that you have a beef with. That is, both "liberties" do not "hurt" others. And both "liberties" resulted in some form of "narrow freedom" or "isolation." If there is a direct correlation between the two, I'd be curious as to which one was first "created and used."

[Chrysostom]

This view of liberty traces back to William of Ockham, who offered an alternative to Aquinas's view that freedom was inherently teleological (i.e., freedom for excellence, which Ockham replaced with freedom to do whatever I want), came through Descartes, and was socio-politically expressed in Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, etc. American politics is grounded in a social contract heavily influenced by Locke in particular.

When you've got this fundamental view of freedom, wartime necessarily constrains freedom, and a cold war would make this very psychologically pressing for a long time.

[AlphaSigma]

Originally Posted by Stealth3si

I think what I mean by "ideal candidate" is to vote for Ron Paul in the next election. Maybe that also depends upon the Christian's political philosophy .

And there is mucho discrepancy in what it means to have correct "Christian political ethics" Partially because anyone who does politics is human.

[Stealth3si]

Very mucho so. Even Christians who attend the same church and have the same views on major and minor biblical theology can get into heated political debates amongst each other.

[jthomas1600]

On another note concerning Ron Paul--if you google "Ron Paul racist" you will get a ton of hits. I live a few minutes from his home town and shortly after moving here stumble on an online newspaper I thought looked interesting. It took reading only a few articles to find out I had no intrest at all. All the articles were about black on white crime, like all blacks were thugs and all white peaple were innocent victims--Ron Paul was involved in the formation of this online newspaper. I am not a fan of his at all.

[tht00]

Originally Posted by jthomas1600

On another note concerning Ron Paul--if you google "Ron Paul racist" you will get a ton of hits. I live a few minutes from his home town and shortly after moving here stumble on an online newspaper I thought looked interesting. It took reading only a few articles to find out I had no intrest at all. All the articles were about black on white crime, like all blacks were thugs and all white peaple were innocent victims--Ron Paul was involved in the formation of this online newspaper. I am not a fan of his at all.

Paul has demonstrated, time and time again, that he isn't racist.

[Chrysostom]

This (charge of racism) was the scandal they invented to kill him just before the New Hampshire primary. These claims came up more than a decade ago while he was running for Congress and it turns out that somebody else ran a newsletter with his name on it. He's apologized for his irresponsibility repeatedly and admitted that he should have kept closer tabs on the newsletter.

In my mind he was the most truly anti-racist out of anybody, because he had strategies to really deal with minority inequities instead of just doing stuff that sounds good. For instance, he sees that the drugs laws are very anti-black, and that many govt regulatory taxes are anti-poor, and he actually works to get rid of them.

[jthomas1600]

That's one of the dangers of the information age I guess, accusations can be made and then go on, and on and on. I didn't mean to be a part of the problem.

[tht00]

Originally Posted by jthomas1600

That's one of the dangers of the information age I guess, accusations can be made and then go on, and on and on. I didn't mean to be a part of the problem.

No, that's just the danger of being human. People can (and do) spread awful misinformation.


At least today, I'd say that it's easier to find the truth -- if you search for it.