There are several groups which can be explained as self-righteous, but there is one group which takes the self-righteous-dichotomous thinking to a level rarely witnessed. This is a group which will not tolerate being questioned or criticized—but hey…
The right certainly has self-righteous groups, but no group deserves the mantle more than those involved with Congressman Ron Paul’s campaign for President.
To be clear, there are many points of the Paul Campaign which are interesting: Paul’s stance on decreasing the Nanny State, thereby making the Federal Government less intrusive, is a point which should resonates to both Left and Right: His stance against the War on Drugs is compelling and the Congressman often debates these points well. Where he should lose a lot of credibility is on his obsession with making too many arguments about military spending.
In the Republican Candidate debate just before the Ames Straw Poll, Paul was asked about his stance on illegal immigration:
“…I would suggest that we could…pay less attention to the borders between Afghanistan and Iraq and Pakistan and bring our troops home and deal with the border. But why do we pay more attention to the borders overseas and less attention to the borders here at home?”Placing the fact that Iraq does not share a border with Afghanistan or Pakistan aside, Paul’s obsession with “military adventures oversees” is palpable. Would he suggest that the troops coming home should be placed on our borders? How does one measure “paying attention?” Does he in some way mean that the Marines and the border patrol are in some way the same entity or perhaps it is in some way impossible for two entities of the same country to have separate directives? Even if these answers were answered by the Paul campaign, most libertarian thinkers (like Paul himself on another day) are not for stricter enforcement on the borders. So this statement is rife with non sequiturs and contradictions.
But when it comes to his persistence on making nearly every argument about foreign wars, non sequiturs and contradictions are his modus operandi. In a recent interview with Fox News Sunday, Paul suggested that any money appropriated hurricane relief should be conditioned on the end of US involvement in Libya. This statement was made after he had argued that the federal government was broke.
Let’s follow this reasoning for a moment: In a time of Trillion-dollar-deficits he would insist on a perceived two billion dollar cut before then spending one billion on hurricane relief. This entire compromise would constitute about %0.001 of the annual budget deficit. Note that Paul didn’t mention cutting any entitlements, light-rail projects, high-speed-rail projects, art grants, or the sizable amount of Pork which is brought home to his district year after year. Many of these other programs dwarf spending on Libya.
No, usually when spending cuts are mentioned by Paul, they are in the military.
This isn’t to state that there isn’t waste in the military; I am suggesting simply that Paul’s obsession with military spending, when it is a shrinking percentage of the federal budget compared to entitlements, is like taking your smoking sputtering car to the mechanic and insisting on having the tire pressure checked.
Beyond military spending obsessions, self-righteousness and completely black and white views are also found in many of Paul’s supporters. From the common view that Paul is the only legitimate candidate, to the way any criticism of Paul is handled.
When Mitt Romney laughed about some of Paul’s positions on Lars Larson’s radio show, there was a chorus of outcry about Romney being a statist, progressive. Beyond that rather typical response (at least from Paul supporters) the outcry resembled the claim of blasphemy in the way the clip went viral, and by the pure venom which often accompanied the clip (many of the reactions to Romney’s comments are not appropriate in mixed company).
Oddly enough, when supporters aren’t holding online witch trials for blasphemers, they are crying victim for the way their cherished candidate is being ignored by the media. What they don’t understand is that lighter coverage is, more than likely, helping Paul. If there were full coverage of his goofier statements such as: A border fence on the southern border would keep Americans in, or the killing of Bin Laden was a precursor to war with Pakistan (and this list is by no means exhaustive) then his poll numbers would sink faster than Dennis Kucinich after his public confession he had seen a UFO.
But no matter how the media covers Paul, he won’t win enough delegates to matter at the convention. He will, on the other hand, write more books and raise a lot of money to hire members of his family on his campaign, and his supporters will have the satisfaction of having taken some moral high ground. So alas Paul supporters will in some self-righteous way have won, while remaining largely insignificant.
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