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.

Today’s announcement of unemployment rates for March has reminded me of an issue I wrote about a few years ago concerning work ethic and income. Today, the Associated Press reported:

Unemployment zoomed to 8.5 percent last month, the highest in a quarter-century, as employers axed 663,000 more workers and pushed the nation’s jobless ranks past 13 million. The hard times were only expected to get harder — a painful 10 percent jobless rate before long.

The current rate would be even higher — 15.6 percent — if it included laid-off workers who have given up looking for new jobs or have had to settle for part-time work because they can’t do any better. That’s the highest on record for that number in figures that go back to 1994.

In my paper, which was a rudimentary exercise in academic social research, I criticized an earlier article by Barry Bluestone in which he cites 10 primary reasons for income stratification. My primary criticism was that Bluestone ignored an important factor– work ethic. You can download a copy of my paper, “The Impact of Work Ethic on Income,” here.

Today’s unemployment report reminded me of this paper, because it raises yet another important factor– the economy at large. It would be interesting to research how an economic recession affects income stratification.

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.

Over at Pressing The Flesh, another politics blog, I ran across this recent YouTube video of the late Tim Russert interviewing John McCain on Meet The Press. He traps McCain by making him eat some of his own words about Congress’s responsibility in wartime situations.