I intentionally avoid adding anything to this blog that isn’t strictly related to its stated purpose to explore the ways in which capitalism and culture intersect (and often diverge). I consider libertarianism infinitely more than a political party platform, and certainly much more than a specific set of beliefs. Unfortunately, when it comes to politics, even the more rational and objective among us seem too willing to abandon those qualities in favor of trying to reduce any political candidate to a few short, woefully inadequate platitudes and cliches. And, now that Ron Paul is once again a candidate for president, we’re confronted with a great deal of media that tries to mitigate the value of his candidacy because it’s so much more difficult to distill the essence of actual ideals than that of rhetoric. So, I feel like putting this this phenomenon in perspective for anyone who may be interested.

To start with, the term “libertarian” describes an ideal– not a party or a specific set of positions. At its core, it’s the idea that a government should not have the power to hinder the right of any individual to live his or her life as he sees fit as long as it does not hinder the right of any other individual to do the same. There is plenty of literature available from The CATO Institute (among other places) that will carefully explain the rationale that leads up to this, but, essentially, a libertarian nation would protect its citizens from harm and mediate the disagreements that may arise between any two entities who feel that ideal has been breached. The economy that would drive such a society would be one of free and open markets– often referred to as “capitalism.” If that sounds vaguely familiar, it may be because it is the ideal upon which much of this country’s sovereignty was originally based. It’s what inspired the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, as well as the three branches of our government as we typically learn about them as children. One may disagree with this ideal, but that is basically what the libertarian ideal is about. Many libertarians disagree about how that paradigm should be applied to some of the most difficult questions that face this country, and that’s why it’s folly to try to ascribe a specific set of political positions to anyone who identifies as libertarian. Ron Paul is a libertarian politician who is seeking the Republican nomination for the Presidential candidacy.

The truth is that most people buy in to a certain style of rhetoric more than they truly buy into a political philosophy, and this is dangerous. Any cursory examination of a year’s worth of voting records in the US Congress will show that most Republican and Democratic politicians are often not fighting over ideals at all. In spite of this, they lead American voters to believe that anyway when they campaign by using a rhetoric which they may even believe in themselves, but their actual actions in Congress belie that rhetoric. And yet Americans continue to vote for candidates based on the rhetoric they’re fed, rather than evident fact. And after more than a century of this, a culture has developed that encourages us to avoid objectivity and instead vote for the candidate that espouses the rhetoric we find most palatable.

When a presidential election includes an “odd ball” candidate whose actual rhetoric is too close to their actual behavior, it often makes people uneasy. Examples in recent history include Ross Perot, Ralph Nader, and Ron Paul. Now, fidelity to one’s ideal is admirable, but, of course, it doesn’t mean you should vote for them. But it does force you to consider the ideal itself, and, unfortunately, many Americans would rather write these candidates off than assume the hard and unfamiliar duty of actually weighing out the merits of these candidates’ ideals– without all the rhetoric that goes with it.

The Boston Globe just published a piece claiming that Ron Paul’s appeal to an independent strain of Republican voters and the possibility of a third-party or independent candidacy if he doesn’t win the Republican nomination could guarantee a win for Barack Obama in 2012. I’m reminded of all the political commentators who publicly blamed people who voted for Ralph Nader in 2000 for George W. Bush’s win, because they assumed that these were truly democrats who would have otherwise voted for Gore. And how stupid is that? Those voters were no more to blame than all the people who voted for Bush. That’s how elections are supposed to work in this country! You are supposed to choose the candidate you want to do the job. But the aforementioned culture has reduced our choices, in many ways, to candidates of two different strains of rhetoric– Republican and Democrat. And those strains are highly muddled at that.

The fact that commentators at The Boston Globe and other pundits want to place blame for an election outcome on a small set of voters who may be more objectively aware of their candidate’s true ideals and thus vote in a manner that is more mature and reverent of their duty puts the problem with this two-party rhetorical culture in sharp relief. The voters who know what they believe and vote for the candidate they truly understand are a persecuted minority. It’s a shame, and it leads inevitably to elected leaders who place far more value on the rewards rhetoric can bring than to any particular ideal. These people are hard to trust, and it’s a system that is not likely to make the most qualified candidate rise to the top.

John McCain recently displayed yet another example of how truly disingenuous he is, by criticizing the Georgian-Russian Conflict with the statement that, “In the 21st century, nations don’t invade other nations.” Watch the video below, and then let’s talk.

I don’t want to spend too much time on this blog just talking politics. This site is supposed to be about the intersection of capitalism and culture. But, it’s an election year, and, I suppose you just can’t get away from it. Lord knows I’ve spent enough time writing about the virtues of Ron Paul.

The fact that John McCain was able to come from so far behind in the primaries to achieve the position he’s in now makes me sad for the gullibility of so many Americans. The man is utterly, desperately, completely disingenuous. He talks about how much he sympathizes with people who disagree with him, which would be great, except that he’s so obviously full of crap. His advisers are lobbyists and sycophants who tell him that the policies he wants to work, will work. And how can anyone have fallen for the way he laid it on so thick during one of the Republican debates when he took his microphone off the podium and walked out to address the wife of a veteran who disagreed with the war? That stunt should have buried him. When a person is truly compassionate, these gestures emerge organically. When a person is deceitful and conniving, these gestures are contrived. And how can ANYONE not see this in John McCain?

Don’t forget how the late Tim Russert caught John McCain being disingenuous about the war earlier this year. The man is a hypocrite. Why are so many Americans buying his lines? About this most recent gaff, Huffington Post had this to say:

It was the type of foreign policy rhetorical blunder that has regularly plagued the McCain campaign and could have diplomatic ripples as well. Certainly the comment was meant in innocence. But for those predisposed to the notion that the U.S. is an increasingly arrogant international actor, the suggestion by a presidential candidate that, in this day and age, countries don’t invade one another – when the U.S. is occupying two foreign nations – does little to alleviate that negative perception.

I suppose the larger issue does, in fact, pertain to culture, if not capitalism: We’re a nation very often, very easily led by men of mediocrity.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting today that Barack Obama’s tax plan includes an increase in taxes on capital gains and income from investment dividends.

Sen. Obama outlined a plan Thursday to raise tax rates on capital gains and dividend income from 15% to 20% for individuals and families making more than $200,000 and $250,000, respectively. He also detailed a plan to levy payroll taxes on earnings above $250,000 at a rate between 2% and 4%, though that increase wouldn’t occur for at least a decade. Right now, payroll taxes, used to fund retirement benefits, are levied on income up to $102,000.

To put it simply, capital gains and dividends are the income you earn from your investments. With investors’ confidence in the market currently very low (The DOW closed yesterday more than 1600 points lower than it did a year ago.), it would seem counter-intuitive to give the people who have the money to invest any kind of disincentive to do so. And yet, a promise that 20% of any money they make will be taken from them will almost certainly do that very thing. Proposals like this demonstrate at least one of two things about Barack Obama:

1. He doesn’t understand basic economic principles. OR
2. He doesn’t care about the economy or how it affects people.

I happen to believe that Barack Obama does care about what happens to the American people, but it’s of little comfort since it suggests that he knows nothing about the economy or how to foster its growth. The same disincentive will undoubtedly be at work if he succeeds in raising payroll taxes, as it will encourage employers to refrain from giving their excelling employees raises in pay once they begin to approach the newly taxable bracket.

America is at a difficult crossroad this year. We aren’t electing a new president in a time of substantial prosperity or peace. The economy has been faltering for almost a year, and our current president seems to believe that nothing is wrong– that if he ignores the problem, historians will say he finished his term with a stable and flourishing economy. That we have chosen as the two major candidates to succeed him men who have no fundamental understanding of economics themselves is troubling. Whoever gets the job in November is going to have the problem of weak market confidence and tight-pursed employers when he assumes office in January. Americans should think long and hard about this, because we could turn this problem around in four years. Enduring it for another four, on the other hand, could be a disaster.

On Tuesday, the Washington Post ran an article by staff writer Matthew Mosk, criticizing Ron Paul for hiring family members to work on his campaign. Mosk demonstrated his woefully inept understanding of Paul’s positions as early as the lead paragraph:

Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) has built a national following largely by preaching an isolationist foreign policy. Stick with your own kind, says the maverick presidential candidate.

And he goes on:

And that’s more or less what he has been doing over the past few months, putting relatives in a slew of key positions and paying them a total of $169,063, according to the latest campaign finance reports.

I don’t have the energy or desire to pick apart Mosk’s entire article, when it so obviously demonstrates his distaste for Ron Paul’s ideals and, thus, reveals the motivation behind writing the shitpile article that showed up on A3 last Tuesday. But, since Matthew Mosk is an idiot, and not just somebody who disagrees with Paul, I’ll say this much:

Ron Paul does not support isolationist foreign policies. Just last week, on National Public Radio, Ron Paul reiterated his position, saying that the best kind of humanitarian aid the United States government could offer any country is this: Stop bombing people! Furthermore, Ron Paul encourages diplomacy, free trade, and non-governmental foreign assistance. None of these things would be possible in an isolationist nation.

Enlisting the help of a candidate’s family members throughout a campaign is a time-honored tradition that extends back to the early beginnings of this country. It is, in fact, expected of closer family members such as the candidate’s wife or husband. For anyone working on a campaign in a position that would be paid if the worker were not related to the candidate, it’s actually an ethical imperative that the relative be paid the same amount.

Also, of the 30+ million dollars Ron Paul’s supporters have contributed to his campaign, the $169,000 paid to six workers related to him accounts for less than one percent of that total.

Mosk later suggests that continuing to campaign until the convention when John McCain, the presumptive nominee, becomes the actual nominee, is somehow untoward as well:

Paul has received relatively few votes in his insurgent bid for the Republican nomination, but he has attracted an extraordinarily dedicated following that has flooded his campaign coffers with more than $30 million in donations. Even after releasing a video on his Web site in March indicating that he no longer expected to win the Republican nomination, Paul has continued to collect and spend those riches.

…

An added concern with the presidential campaign, Sloan said, is that Paul has fundamentally transformed his bid for the White House into something more ephemeral. Spending by the campaign has slowed considerably over the past month. Paul spent $470,862 in April, leaving him with $4.7 million remaining.

Well, the same day this article ran in the Washington Post, Ron Paul had his best performance so far in the Idaho Republican primary where he picked up 24% of the vote. Is Ron Paul going to win the Republican nomination this year? Unfortunately, no. But, has his campaign become ephemeral? Only in the weaker and willfully obtuse minds of people like Matthew Mosk.