Ron Paul Notebook

Farewell! “Goodbye World.”

Well, I suppose the title is misleading.

The Ron Paul Notebook is at an end, but our presence on the Internet will go on.

It doesn’t matter where we are; when we’re on the Internet, we’re everywhere.

Our mission at the Ron Paul Notebook, besides just strictly reading and reviewing Ron Paul’s Liberty Defined, has been to dive into all the ideas per se that surround his book, investigate and study them, educate each other, debate, and try to move public ideas in the correct direction towards liberty by educating others outside of our freedom supporting group.

This is a modest blog, but every little project helps.

Dr. Paul reiterates the importance of education in the book’s afterword. The gentleman asks us to “form a new approach to thinking about society and government, one that imagines that we can get along without … central management.” (pages 323-324)

We can only win if we change ideas.

So self-educate and then educate others.

With a changing of hearts and minds, we can get the public to adopt Ron Paul’s “Ten Principles of a Free Society,” which appears in the appendix.

(By the way, here’s an online index for Liberty Defined.)

Thank you for reading our reviews, analyses, and tangential discussions!

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Again, thank you for reading.

(L) Zionism – The Last of the 50 Issues

For one last time, let’s take a few review notes as we read the final issue…

Zionism: In response to Jewish diaspora, a movement was created with the objective (1) to preserve Jewish identity and (2) to create and maintain a Jewish nation in Palestine. It’s claimed that the Bar Kokhba Revolt gives Jews a historical claim to the land of Israel.

State of Israel: Existing land titles were at first generally respected in the nation’s genesis. Later grand engineering started with the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine. Land was forcefully taken to create a new state, and that act is morally questionable.

Ron Paul in Liberty Defined does praise Zionism as helping to solidify Jews. A people honoring itself and preserving its identity is laudable. I think this might confuse some libertarians (especially young or left-leaning), but it shouldn’t. All of us are individual members of various organizations, associations, and bonds. It’s only natural.

Though Dr. Paul does question the use of force to obtain any such goals. Peacefully obtaining all land is a lot less troublesome than violently taking any land, for example. The latter is going to create a lot of conflict. And, I think we can add, so is politics in general. Politics is basically about picking and choosing winners and losers. (Whereas in market exchanges, there need not be losers.) It monolithically imposes itself on everyone with uniformity. Hence it crushes genuine diversity.

In line with this, Ron Paul writes: “With less government involvement, different religious groups were quite capable of getting along together peacefully.” (page 316)

This is why, we might conclude, the Middle East, comparatively speaking, would be less tense of an area if politics didn’t so much play into goals.

Quoting Dr. Paul again: “It is tragic that the political agenda has been so divisive for the Middle East and the world, especially given that the entire mission of creating a homeland might have been accomplished without the use of force.” (page 315)

Anyhow, Ron Paul writes that he is a non-interventionist.

He explains the implications of this for Israel. With the U.S. there would be complete free trade, but no tangling alliances or foreign aid. This, he reasons, would give them an advantage because they would no longer be dependent on the U.S. in its decision making policies. (The greater foreign aid that goes to its neighbors would be gone as well.) Without interventionism, moreover, there would be greater pressure for those in the Middle East to work together.

And we in our review have to mention the obvious point Ron Paul makes: Israel, with hundreds of nuclear weapons, has far greater military superiority than any other nation nearby.

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“Jews for Ron Paul” by Walter Block

(XLIX) Against Governmental Privileges

Issue 49 is on unions. But the chapter is on more than that, actually.

Dr. Ron Paul writes about this issue so that he can connect it into the “big picture.”

Many central themes are to be found throughout Liberty Defined. We’ve tried to cover them in our reviews. One of them deals with why all of us should oppose the granting of governmental privilege to any group of men. To do so would grant them power over another group. It would thereby take away that other group’s freedom. The symmetry of liberty would be destroyed. And it would turn man’s energies to the political world, having one group trying to get privilege over what it views as its competition in a never ending spiral of political investment.

The problem with unions is that they have governmental privileges.

“The laborer gains legal force,” Dr. Paul explains, “over the employer” through unions. (page 302) Ron Paul has first-hand experience with this, as his father was a businessman and had to guard against the possibility of union caused violence.

A very good expository of today’s state of affairs is given by Edward Chamberlin (historian Thomas Woods has quoted him in a couple of his books):

“If A is bargaining with B over the sale of his house, and if A were given the privileges of a modern labor union, he would be able (1) to conspire with all other owners of houses not to make any alternative offer to B, using violence or the threat of violence if necessary to prevent them, (2) to deprive B himself of access to any alternative offers, (3) to surround the house of B and cut off all deliveries, including food (except by parcel post), (4) to stop all movement from B’s house, so that if he were for instance a doctor he could not sell his services and make a living, and (5) to institute a boycott of B’s business. All of these privileges, if he were capable of carrying them out, would no doubt strengthen A’s position. But they would not be regarded by anyone as part of ‘bargaining’——unless A were a labor union.”

Unions of the present are therefore not just peaceful organizations in which its members voluntarily decide to go on strike. If it were so, that would be perfectly alright for a libertarian, including Ron Paul.

Another central theme that’s found in this particular chapter is the importance of understanding economic theory and its connection to liberty. “What many people don’t realize,” says Dr. Paul, “is that in a free market economy, labor becomes scarce and the businessman must seek the best workers by offering higher wages.” (page 304)

That’s the best way to advance the interests of labor, reasons Ron Paul. Those interests are not in conflict with employers in a free economy. By making labor physically more productive with capital, they are materially worth more and only then can be paid more. Material wealth can only be increased with more goods.

With more goods, everyone in the entire economy benefits as their purchasing power goes up. The more productive labor even helps the less productive labor. No one, in other words, is a drain on someone else.

In contrast: “Minimum wage laws, mandating union contrasts (closed shop), and Davis-Bacon rules are all designed to help a small segment of workers gain economic advantage while actually hurting unprotected workers.” (page 309)

Unions forcefully limit the amount of labor competition, for example. “Scabs” who are often in greater need are forbidden to take a job the unions are fighting against. Hence, unions are not in the interests of all workers but only some at the expense of others.

(XLVIII) Free Trade versus Managed Trade

A good starting point to further study on the issue of trade policies is Ron Paul’s 2000 speech “What is Free Trade?”

Our next studying stop is to “Protectionism and the Destruction of Prosperity” by Murray Rothbard. It covers and replies to all major objections to free trade.

Finally, a quick look to why a trade policy like NAFTA has little to do with free trade is provided by reading Rothbard’s “The Nafta Myth.”

With that complete, it’s our job now to read the next issue in Liberty Defined by Ron Paul…

(XLVIII) International Commercial Freedom

The next few pages are on “Trade Policies.” I’ve read them, and now it’s time to review them here at the Ron Paul Notebook.

Someone might wonder, before reading Liberty Defined by Ron Paul, if there is a contradiction between Ron Paul believing himself an ardent supporter of free trade while simultaneously being against international trade organizations.

Two things resolve this apparent contradiction. Firstly, the process by which the nation enters into these agreements is problematic. And secondly, perhaps most importantly, we have to understand that the world’s international trade organizations represent not free trade but managed trade which is the thing Ron Paul opposes.

In reading Dr. Paul’s book, he writes for example that “[t]hese trade agreements become instruments for international government entities to regulate trade without explicit consent of Congress.” (page 298) They therefore damage sovereignty.

Still, we might wonder if sovereignty per se is strong enough of a reason to oppose these agreements. Maybe these agreements are the best we can get? The answer to that, I think, is to recognize the bigger potential dangers of centralization as opposed to decentralization.

A second answer is given by Dr. Paul: “Too often the rules handed down [from these organizations] can be beneficial to large international corporations while harming or ignoring the small companies unable to defend themselves against the giant bureaucracy serving the special interests.” (page 298) These organizations therefore are mercantilistic, and thus both damage sovereignty in addition to managing trade in unfree ways.

In defense of Ron Paul, free trade doesn’t require thousands of pages of regulations. If an agreement has that, we know immediately that it has nothing to do with free trade. Free trade only deals with one party voluntarily trading goods with another party. The general law code always applies; e.g., laws against theft and fraud.

Another area of discussion in the book is the relationship between trade, peace, and war.

Ron Paul reasons that free trade interconnects peoples in such a way where it’s mutually beneficial to be peaceful. Sanctions, i.e., the forceful forbidding of trade, do not create that bonding. Its nature to shatter bonds is why it has been a prelude to war. He gives the example of Japan in World War II.

Parenthetically the late Milton Friedman, I’ve heard, thought that it was very important to somehow greatly strengthen trading relationships in the Middle East between Israel and its neighbors. Friedman thought that could ease tensions in the region.

Well, we might have jumped ahead in our review. There’s one more thing to look at. We are assuming genuine free trade doesn’t damage the U.S. economy the ways that protectionists reason. What does Ron Paul think?

He doesn’t answer this question extensively. Indirectly by addressing another matter, he says we free up resources to devote to the production of more products that we otherwise couldn’t, as we save on spending less on cheaper products. Industries don’t remain fixed, moreover. But it’s not necessarily a bad if an industry shrinks to allow for the expansion of another. The dynamics of the free market allows this process to happen beneficially from an aggregate point of view.

The next blog note will add a few more words on this issue and provide some basic references…

(XLVII) Torture: Sadistic Cruelty

Ron Paul finds torturing immoral and against the natural law.

Just think about the man that does the torturing. Do you think he’s acting in a morally acceptable way? What if you or I were in his shoes? The personal element can’t be taken out, much as we might want to.

We could try to rationalize it or whatnot, but inflicting pain on someone else and then dulling our moral senses to it degrades human life. There are boundaries to life which make society humane. There are things that should not be done, even when dealing in war or with enemies. Real conservatives, of all men, should know this.

When thinking about this issue and Ron Paul’s Liberty Defined, I’m reminded of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen’s wise comments on the use of atomic bombs in World War II. We can’t compare the devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to torturing, but I think we can see that too many of us try to remove moral boundaries. We think we can beat evil with evil. The means to ends, men think today, shouldn’t get in the way of ends. All that matters to the modern man appears to be utility.

In Dr. Paul’s book essay, he sends us to a couple of online references:
”Elite Club Conceals CIA Torture Cells,” ABC News, 2009.
”The Abu Ghraib Files,” Salon.com, 2006.

When we further research this issue ourselves, we find that President George W. Bush denied in 2006 that the American government tortures. On President Obama’s part, he has done nothing to change the previous administration’s policies. He will not prosecute anyone.

Ron Paul writes that many reports indicate that several of those tortured by the CIA have been killed. So it’s hardly true, as “conservatives” claim, that all of the interrogation methods used barely inflict any harm.

A man under extreme duress often will say what the torturer wants to hear, explains Dr. Paul. Ron Paul additionally questions how efficient torture actually is. That which is obtained “is rarely if ever of any value.” (page 293)

Dr. Paul writes that accepting the morality of torture opens the door for its expanded use.

Now generally, those who defend torture give hypotheticals. Torturing a man might save lives. That’s possible, to be sure. Though I wonder: how many times has that happened, and can we reasonably document that to prove it? At least for Ron Paul, he appears to doubt a doomsday hypothetical scenario has come up.

Let’s work with this. Pretend it does. Not only that, for the sake of argument, we’ll grant the use of torturing as an exception. An entire American city is in jeopardy. Would it then follow that the whole debate over torture is on “utility” or just a question of a pure balancing act? I don’t think so. Permission wouldn’t then be granted for widespread use or anything close to that. The morality issue wouldn’t leave the debate. It seems to me, therefore, that those who justify torture by doomsday hypotheticals prove less than what they set out to prove.

Ron Paul gives a hypothetical of his own: “If one suspects that one individual out of 100 captured has crucial information, and you don’t know which one it is, are you justified to torture all 100 to get that information?” (page 291)

Why Do Some Hate Ron Paul? And Other Reflections.

“Hate,” the contrary to love, is the correct word.

We can well imagine and do know, in attempting to answer this question, that it comes from an assortment of predispositions. “Conservatives” hate him. “Liberals” hate him. And men “in-between” hate him. At least, some of them do. Plus, of course, it exists in different degrees.

For a couple of reasons at a bare minimum, a large number of men are naturally obscurantist.

The fact is that most don’t think deeply about politics, institutional-social arrangements, or economics. It takes a good deal of research and independent thinking to arrive at, or even to be familiar with, serious libertarian political conclusions, especially because the educational upbringing that practically all of us get is antithetical to it. And frankly, the average man, who is specialized in the division of labor in non-political endeavors, doesn’t have the time to think these things through.

Worse, to a large extent he is likely dependent on the statist framework which in the present age is omnipresent. Dependency will make him unlikely to oppose that framework and its omnipresence will make him take it for granted. Psychologically it’s always difficult to go up against something ubiquitous in society——especially if it’s something treated with reverence by him and his fellow man. The modern identification between State and society is what does it. Thus if someone comes along that challenges that framework, he is going to be viewed with dislike.

Another thing to consider is economic theory, something Ron Paul and libertarians talk about a lot. Good economics is very abstract, and in some ways can be more abstract than mathematics (or at least the mathematics that most are familiar with or vaguely acquainted with). Thus it’s difficult to understand. No man, however, can claim to understand society much unless he knows some economics. Though I’m biased towards economic understanding, it’s very difficult to see how someone can appreciate Ron Paul’s points or any libertarian’s points without knowing what opportunity cost is or how exactly free-market pricing allocates resources. Without thinking about “the unseen” (as written about by Frédéric Bastiat), a man cannot comprehend alternatives to statism.

Finally, we must consider democracy per se. Democracy doesn’t give an edge to better ideas or sounder visions. A trouble with undertaking to understand, e.g., economic theory is that it doesn’t pay to do so. Voters better informed have no more influence than those less so. No incentive exists for a single voter to become knowledgeable. It costs time and the results in democracy are negligible for one man. Given man’s nature, he will be inclined to hold onto his cherished opinions. He will be obstinate. Since serious thought is not promoted in democracy, man will pick opinions like he picks his favorite cuisine.

Say what we will about the free-market, there is some incentive for man to improve and costs for not doing so in competitive capitalism. Men might demand goods that are abhorrent, but it’s the best economic system we have nonetheless. Is democracy the best political system? I have my doubts——many actually.

It could be that if we took the positive qualities of the free-market and somehow applied them to some functions of the political system we would then get better results. The problem is having that happen. For a similar reason that democracy doesn’t promote good ideas by default, and might by default actually tend to promote bad ideas, it similarly might be impossible to see a better political system based on the free-market get formed because of public opinion preventing it from happening. A public opinion, moreover, that has been corrupted by democracy. Despite what other libertarians might say, there is therefore reason for continued pessimism. Yet if there is any chance for real change, it can only happen with libertarians instructing this mass public. Although, the good news is that Ron Paul’s support largely comes from the young, and the future is for the young.

In any case, there really are a lot of “conservatives” in the sense of accepting the status quo of ideas. If it is not outright acceptance, it’s mostly the taking for granted those ideas. Perhaps ironically, probably the majority that fits this description are on the political Left. A good deal are on the Right, as well, but a Right that is entirely subservient to what progressives have accomplished.

It is just that man’s “prejudices” against new and different ideas, ones away from statism, must be broken through somehow. A Ron Paul directly challenges these prejudices. That’s why members of the status quo establishment treat him like dirt. It additionally gives us an explanation of why some hate the man. I have seen, read, and heard them.

Another group, a subset of the Right, to consider in this context is the typical Republican-conservative talk radio show host and listener. They are a little different, although it might be a distinction without hardly any significant difference. Nevertheless, at least in their case they usually talk and act if they they are challengers against the status quo. “Progressiveness,” “big government,” “the mainstream media,” and “the liberal education establishment” are their enemies.

On the surface, in addition, they ostensibly seem to desire at some level different or new ideas to sweep away the current order of things: Education to abandon liberal intellectuals and propaganda; the mainstream media to change its biases; limited government to replace big government; and a conservative attitude to rid progressive sentiments on Christianity and the family and so on.

Ironically, however, the greater the degree of hate against Ron Paul, the more likely it seems to come from this “conservative” direction. That’s probably because he shows them for what they are; namely, empty and unprincipled in desiring to limit the State. Yes, there’s the foreign policy issue. Does that explain it? No, (probably) not as much as him showing them as empty and unprincipled. Besides, they hardly ever really challenge Dr. Paul’s foreign policy views, except to create a straw man of them. Even on their own standards, the current neoconservative policies have helped radical Islamic beliefs. Iraq is no longer secular and is more allied with Iran, for example. And those that hate Dr. Paul on foreign policy act as if the sky would fall in the U.S. if nation building ended. But it is questionable how many of them actually think that deep down.

By the way, it always seemed naïve to me when Ron Paul supporters thought he had a very good shot to win the Republican nomination. No group is going to overturn the statism of today, which has a long tradition, anytime soon. Politics hasn’t been capricious. The ideological battle for liberty, if it is ever won, will take time. We have to think for the long-term, and hence focus on the young. They are less hostile, relatively speaking, to Dr. Paul and new ideas.

A President Ron Paul in all probability couldn’t accomplish that much change, but he can act as a teacher to help set the grounds for change. Just by running for office he is doing that. Accompanying acknowledging that the future is for the young, and that they are not parochial, we have to see that the decentralization of information can work to our advantage by opening up a greater competition with the mainstream media. We further must see that decentralizing education should be a goal of our movement. The current environment only helps produce an antagonistic atmosphere to the ideas of liberty.

(XLVI) To Reduce Terrorism, We Must Understand It

After reading Ron Paul’s essay on the issue of terrorism, it’s time to type out some notes and add some review analysis here at the Ron Paul Notebook.

Defining Terrorism:

• The term goes back to the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror.
• It is politically motivated violence from non-governmental groups & individuals.
• There is no fixed or universal way the term is used, however.
• Government action has been described as terrorist action at times.
• The word is applied differently by different people.

Explaining this, Dr. Paul writes that one man’s “terrorist” might be another man’s “patriot” who is fighting a foreign occupation. That foreign government occupier itself might be said to be engaging in “terrorism” by those occupied.

Preventing Terrorism:

• Terrorism is serious and it does need addressing, says Ron Paul.
• We have to understand the causes of terrorism.
• If we know the causes, we’re more likely to diminish it.
• If we don’t know the causes, we’re not as likely——and might actually grow it.

These are very simple points.

There are those who nevertheless take Ron Paul’s attempts at explaining terrorism as some kind of justification of it. Or they take his explanation of saying that A hates B which thereby leads A to attack B as a blaming of B as somehow the guilty party in the violent act that’s being considered. Clearly, none of that is implied. It’s a horrendous distortion of Dr. Paul’s argument.

When B is the government and terrorist A kills an American citizen C, as what happened on 9-11, it is obvious also that C is not B. So even when Ron Paul is talking about the bad acts or acts seen as bad done by B, it doesn’t at all mean that B is the American people in general which would then include individual C. That would be to fail to make a distinction between the national government and the diverse people. B’s actions are not C’s actions.

We should hope that a political commentator would see the distinction, even if a terrorist might not be able to.

Nor can we take explanation as meaning that nothing can be done about it or in response to it. As Ron Paul writes in this issue, understanding motivation is done in all law enforcement.

Demagogues create a straw man of Ron Paul’s arguments.

We must have heard this straw man about a thousand times from the mainstream media.

Now let’s continue our review…

Foreign Policy Motivating Middle Eastern Terrorism:

Ron Paul writes that terrorists rarely claim that “religion or some irrational desire to slaughter the innocent” is why they do what they do. (page 286)

They focus on: U.S. government occupations; troops in Saudi Arabia; bias towards Israel; devastating sanctions [which negatively affects the people > their government]

Cutting the Fuse by Robert Pape and James Ke Feldman are referenced.

And take a look at our previous analysis at the Ron Paul Notebook: here.

Ron Paul writes: “Plainly speaking, when we fight terrorism by exacerbating the very reasons for that terrorism, we increase the violence against us.” (page 287, his emphasis)

When we read, we see that Dr. Paul is a realist.

He doesn’t believe “universal brotherhood” (page 287) as the upshot to a change in foreign policy. Like before, it would be a straw man——and I’ve seen it more than once——to claim that he thinks all terrorism and violence would just end if we had a foreign policy he advocates. Dr. Paul instead thinks terrorism would decrease in time as directed against the U.S. because the largest motivating factors would disappear.

Another important insight we should take note at is his point that the government really has little (or no) incentive to understand what motivates terrorism.

The problems the government helps to create allows it to have more power. Why would it want to give that up? Or we can think about this: why would the military industrial complex want an end to empire?

As usual, Ron Paul wants us readers to think about the roots of a problem. To reduce terrorism, we must understand it first. It should be a simple point.