Ron Paul: the Australian view

Sometimes you get the best perspective from your friends abroad. Thoughts on Freedom, the Australian Libertarian Society Blog has an extensive article bringing Aussie libertarians up to date on the Ron Paul story.

Here's their take on the newsletter controversy:

About 20 years ago RP allowed his friend Lew Rockwell to publish a newsletter in his name, and he apparently used to write articles for the newsletter relating to foreign policy. In the early 1990s, when RP was out of politics and spending his time travelling & working, the newsletter included a couple of racist comments. The author of these comments isn’t known, but it was probably one of the many writers employed by Lew Rockwell.

Ron Paul has strongly repudiated the racist sentiments in the newsletter, but he took responsibility for allowing his name to be linked to such comments and apologised. Over the years he has spoken repeatedly against discrimination against any groups, and he counts Martin Luther King and Ghandi as some of his heros. The next RP fund-raising day is on Martin Luther King holiday.

Some libertarians are not impressed, and are speaking out against Ron Paul. They are worried that the newsletter incident (combined with the fact that he received a $500 donation from a fascist) will lead people to think that libertarians are all racist. Some other libertarians (including myself) continue to applaud the efforts of Ron Paul and hope that his message continues to reach a bigger audience as the American primary elections go on.

What most interested me was the frank assessment of Paul's platform:

Let me be clear — I don’t agree with everything Ron Paul says. I agree with shrinking the size of the US empire, but I think there is a role for foreign alliances and occasional deployment of troops overseas. I agree with him that activist monetary policy is a problem, but I am worried about his fixation on gold and his silly rants about monetary collapse (which I think are the worst parts of the newsletters). I agree that the WTO & NAFTA are imperfect, but I don’t think they should be abandoned. And he showed poor judgement with the newsletter.

The writer concludes, however, that Paul's importance in bringing attention to the Libertarian message, and his ability to galvanize new blood into the political process should outweigh his liabilities.

What's most interesting to me, however, is the observation that the very definition of Libertarianism appears to differ depending on the amount of liberty citizens perceive as already existing in a country. This writer's libertarianism, while mainstream for Australia, would be firmly in the pragmatic or reform categories: for example, look at the conservatism about the WTO and NAFTA.

In reading a lot of British and Australian Libertarian blog entries, what I have come to believe is that their libertarianism focuses on much more limited goals because they have an almost innate feeling that fighting the expanding power of government is more or less a lost cause.

There's a lesson in there somewhere.