The Case for Libertarian Conservatism part 2

     The origin of the state resides in the need of the people for protection. They need protection from foreign aggressors, and they need protection from each other. In pursuit of this latter objective, it becomes necessary to define the proper and legitimate relationship of the citizenry to each other and to the group. Hence, the state acquires a legitimate constitutional and legislative function. This obligation to protect the people is the sole purpose of the state.
     Some would place the origin of the state in conquest. The state arose with the conquest of one group by another. The conquering group ruled over the conquered, and the state possesses no legitimacy at all but rules only by force. But such a conquering force would have to have been organized into the primary institution of a state to begin with. A conquering army must be supported from the rear. To organize for conquest, one must first organize for defense.
     We see a simple example of this in the Bible. The children of Israel occupied the mountainous regions of Canaan, what we now call the "West Bank," and did battle with the Philistines who occupied the lowlands and coastal region that comprise modern Israel. The Israelites were ruled by Judges, if "ruled" can even be considered the proper term. The Judges were actually temporary generals who led part-time militias that went into battle, typically, only after the harvest was in. The Judges power over the tribes or individuals was not institutional. It was personal and temporary.
     But after a while, the demand arose for a king. One wonders why, since the Judges had been reasonably competent and had no power to interfere in the private activities of the people, that a king should be desired. The priest Samuel warned against it claiming, with some insight, that a king would rob the people of their freedom.
     But Samuel's eloquence could not defeat the circumstance. Israel needed a king because they needed a standing army. Evidently, the Philistines were not content to fight only after the harvest was in, and Israel now needed to develop institutions that could respond to this enlarged threat.
     And so Saul became a full-time king in charge of a full-time army. But such an army must be maintained, and that requires a paymaster, a quartermaster, and an armorer. It means tax collectors and a Royal treasury. And the primitive state has now evolved into the professional state. Government of the people has evolved into government for the people. And the problem now is to keep it for the people instead of against them.
     A king with an army can be sorely tempted to use it. And if an invading army is defeated it might be strategically advantageous to return the favor and invade the enemy territory, destroy the enemy's army and annex his territory.
     Conquest has now become the goal of the state. But such a goal is not legitimate. For we have seen that the state can have only one goal, and that is the protection of the people. It doesn't matter if the conquest has popular support. Indeed, it's likely that it will have popular support since the people are anxious to possess the enemy's lands. But they can do so only at a price.
     That price is liberty. The only legitimate purpose of the state is to protect the people, and the only power of the state is the power to harness the wealth and labor of the people towards it's own ends. If those ends are not the protection of the people, but the advancement of the state's own power and goals, the people have become oppressed. It matters not at all that the people approve of this aggrandizement of state power.
     Freedom is not an end. It is a means to an end. If the people are to be free, they must be free to pursue their own goals. If the state would compel the people to pursue a purpose apart from the state's legitimate mandate, the people are no long free to pursue their own goals but must be restrained in such behavior or even forced into a contrary activity.
     It is in this clarification of means and ends that we encounter the "libertarian" part of libertarian conservatism. Conservatism provides the ethic for understanding the property relationship that libertarianism lacks. And conservatism recognizes that the state is a necessary condition of liberty and not the "criminal enterprise" claimed by the anarcho-capitalist. At the same time, conservatism recognizes that the state's function can easily be perverted, and that it is only through traditional usage and traditional institutions that state power can be restrained.
     It is often forgotten that Edmund Burke's book, Reflections on the Revolution in France, is about liberty. It is about how liberty is attained and how it is preserved. It is not an attack on the French desire for freedom. It is a critique of their method. Liberty is not the product of eloquent ideas. It is expressed in precise meanings. It is not won by revolutionary committees. It is maintained by powerful social institutions. Liberty cannot be won by social revolution. It must become embedded in the social order. Liberty consists in the ability to pursue one's own goals. And it's in recognizing the distinction between means and ends, not in some mythical property right, that we find the necessary standard for limiting state power.
     But if building an empire is not a legitimate goal of the state, neither is it legitimate for the state to build a Christian commonwealth, an Aryan nation, or a socialist utopia. If  I am forced to pursue the goals of the state, beyond self-protection, the state has overstepped its bounds, and my freedom has been compromised.
     At this point the socialist might object. It is quite legitimate, according to this theory, for the state to define the property right. Why then, can't the state define the property right to exclude private property?  All property is communal, just as it is in nature. No one has any right to alienate any property from his neighbors. That is really what socialism is about, and it is perfectly permissible according to the principles of libertarian conservatism that you have outlined here.
     That is perfectly correct insofar as communal property is foundational to that society. The ancient Egyptians held much of their property in common and the theocratic government stored surplus grain during good years to help see them through the times of drought. No reasonable conservative would tell them they must abandon that practice and convert their society to one of small individually-owned plots. Among the protections the government offered was protection against the natural elements and, in the course of  time, that protection could be regarded as one of the "rights" of an ancient Egyptian. To break up that system on the basis of some theoretical concept of "individual responsibility" amounts to destroying the rights of the Egyptian people with no assurance that any new institutions that emerge will, in fact, be conducive  to such individualism.
     But to overthrow private property, where that is an established part of the social and economic system involves an overthrow of the rights of the people as well. That is because these rights are defined and protected by the existing social order and become meaningless when that order  is dissolved.
     A revolutionary committee cannot give you back your rights. It doesn't matter how eloquently they propound on such rights in the new, revolutionary constitution. A revolutionary committee is dedicated to its own goals, and the goals of the individual must necessarily be subordinated to the goals of the revolutionary state. This is a disaster for freedom and a perversion of the foundational purposes of a state.
     The power of a state must therefore be limited to its legitimate purposes. But it is dangerous to expect that a state will voluntarily limit its own power. From the moment the state passes from its primitive condition of participatory government to an expanded professional form of government, its powers need to be checked.
     This can only be done through existing social institutions. If the king is becoming too powerful, it is important for other community leaders to step up. Tribal leaders, the nobility, and religious leaders have typically been the prominent opponents of centralized power, but in the modern world that role may be filled by state and local governments, political parties, labor unions, the media and various economic  interests.
     The individual is powerless against the state. The sovereign power expands as the people are reduced to  the role of solitary individuals. The sovereign power is restrained when social institutions are not under its absolute control. Individualism is, by far, the greatest ideological threat to the rights of the individual.
     Hence, the sovereign power comes closer and closer to totalitarianism as individual rights multiply. Though suffused with the nomenclature of freedom, the ideology of autonomous individuality is really an ideology of statism. Women must be, above all, independent and free.  They must be free to focus on themselves and their own personal ambitions. Their roles as housewives, daughters, or mothers and their connections to family or other social groups is secondary to their true essence as (powerless) individuals.
     It is insufficient for society to work actively to secure traditional citizen's rights for racial minorities. These minorities also deserve "victim's rights."  Not so coincidentally, victim's rights are not secured by traditional institutions employing traditional meanings and securing traditional relationships. They are secured instead through an expansion of state power  and through an emerging statist ideology that is generally recognized as a "political correctness."
     In other words, these new rights are not secured through legitimacy. They do not arise from the state performing its original, protective function. On the contrary, these new rights emerge precisely by re-defining the individual as one who is unconnected to other social organizations and institutions. This new individual is "free" from such social bonds, and independent of the social restraints and onerous duties that such ancillary groups may sometimes impose.
     The irony is that, once freed of his social connections, the individual loses all connections to the professionalized state. The contract relationship, so beloved by adherents of modern "democracy," cannot protect the rights of the individual because the individual has no power to enforce this contract against the state.
     In 1962 the Supreme Court in its decision, Baker vs. Carr, declared that equal protection means "One man, one vote" The decision struck down the provision of many state constitutions that provided for at least one house of the state legislature to be over-represented by rural interests. The atomistic individualism of the Court's decision is clear enough. One cannot be represented in government through one's affiliations. "Equal representation" must necessarily mean an equal representation of  individuals.
     That a minority group might need protection against the tyranny of a majority group is a well-recognized principle of democratic government. It was readily understood by the founding fathers. They even ensconced it in our own constitution through such agencies as the United States Senate and the Electoral College.
     But such a principle was completely thrown overboard in Baker vs. Carr. And in subsequent decisions the court has held, essentially, that minorities can only be protected by the power of the state.
     Note the huge shift in minority rights. Minorities no longer find protection through the institutions of the state. Now they must be protected by the institutions of the state. The state is no longer dependent on the minority interest. Rather, the minority interest is now dependent on the state.
     Another little-noticed shift toward the further professionalization of state power was the McGovern Commission reforms. The failure of the anti-war movement to seize control of the Democratic Party at the 1968 convention was attributed primarily to the "undemocratic" practices of the party machinery.
     Indeed, as recently as 1968 most states did not select delegates to the convention through party primaries. Many that did hold primaries followed the practice of tying up control of the delegates by committing them to a "favorite son" candidate who was usually a Senator or Governor from that state. This allowed the party leaders to negotiate deals for the presidential nomination. In 1960, John Kennedy rode a "bandwagon" to the presidential nomination by winning primaries in just two states: Wisconson and West Virginia.
     But the McGovern Commission reforms called for all delegates to be selected in primaries or by party caucuses and conventions open to everyone willing to call themselves Democrats. Where this was not possible because of state law, Democrats were obligated to work to get the law changed.
     Most of the changes were effective by 1972. and they altered the Republican process as well since most of the reforms required changes in state law. The intent, of course, was to allow McGovern to win the nomination in 1972. The result was chaos. Alabama Governor George Wallace, finished second in the very liberal state of Massachusetts and won primaries in Michigan and Maryland as well as in a number of Southern states. He led all the polls and seemed certain to head into the convention with the most delegates. Had he not been paralyzed in an assassination attempt the day before the Maryland primary, the Democrat Party would likely have been thrown into disarray. But Wallace was forced to quit the race, and McGovern secured the nomination.
     The most important affect of the rules, however, was to professionalize the political parties. Traditional party leaders and party workers were no longer the people who determined the nominees. Instead the power shifted to professional organizers, pollsters, media experts, and, above all, to professional fund-raisers.
     With enough money and expertise, it was now possible to go over the heads of state and county chairmen, ward leaders, and precinct committeemen. The candidates could now be "packaged" for an individual who was now "free" to be manipulated.
     I do not cite these examples to urge a counter-reform. My point is to illustrate the totalitarian potential of ideological individualism. Ideological individualism is the myth that the individual has some essence apart from his affiliations. We are to believe that somewhere in the heart of every Male, Polish-American, Roman Catholic father of three, there is an "individual" who yearns to be free of the "guilt" he acquires when he fails to live up fully to the responsibilities that are inherent in his condition in life.
     Most of us common folk would say that it is the unique combination of our affiliations that define our individuality. But for the modern socialist intellectual these affiliations do not define us, they enslave us. This guilt is not understood as a motivator that keeps our Polish-American on a balanced path, it is a disease instilled in him by a backward society. His true nature is to be a free and autonomous individual unbound by moral obligations and social restraints. And it is the role of the state to unbind his chains and cure his disease. For the ultimate goal of the statist is that all people shall one day be a protected minority. All individuals shall be dependent on state power, and the state shall be dependent on no one, and it shall no longer rule by politics, but by command.
     Liberalism and socialism have a common commitment to ideological individualism. The one would free the individual through anarchic liberty, the other through an endless expansion of rights. The libertarian would free the people from state power, ignoring the fact that in the first instance, the people and the state are a single entity. And that entity is composed as much of obligations as it is of liberty. And yet, ironically, it is when we surrender our obligations to a professional elite that our liberty becomes threatened. And it is in the face of this threat that the libertarian becomes rightly alarmed.
     And so the libertarian takes cover in "unalienable" rights. But such rights can not be logically demonstrated nor effectively enforced within the libertarian model. The proclamation of rights does not establish them, and a contract does not secure them. Government is restrained by institutional power, or it is not restrained at all.
     The socialist would multiply our rights to protect us, not merely from our enemies, but from nature and from society as well. But the well-intentioned socialist fails to understand that the only power of the state is the power to commandeer the people. The more it would free us, the more we become enslaved.
     Conservatism recognizes that our rights derive from our individual nature and our social needs. They are the product of evolution, not intelligent design. They are defined with great precision by generations of usage. And they are sustained by the complex nature of a traditional social order.
     And libertarian conservatism recognizes that our liberty derives, not from our rights, which are inextricably bound to our duties, but from the very legitimacy of government itself. For when we pervert the legitimate role of the government, we undermine the liberty we have sought to procure. Yet the freedom we gain is an idealization while the liberty that we lose is very real.

I have written a two-part essay on libertarian conservatism. It is very philosophical in nature so it is not easy reading.  The first part deals primarily with conservative philosophy. The particular expression of that philosophy presented here is original to me, but I believe that the basic principles are a true and accurate expression of conservative philosophy since its inception during the Enlightenment.

The second part deals with libertarian conservativism and represents my own ideas on the subject. I advocate a union of conservatism and libertarianism by retaining the libertarian view of limited government but accepting the conservative view of individual rights as an achievement of a culture rather than as unalienable rights of nature.

I am posting the first essay now. I will post the second later.

The Case for Libertarian Conservatism



We begin our exposition on libertarian conservatism with the claim that the term "libertarian" can be used sensibly as an adjective but never as a noun. The fundamental claim of libertarianism is that the individual is free to do anything he chooses to do as long as it does not cause harm to others. This seems straightforward enough, and it is as long as the term "harm" is limited to the physical death or injury of another person.

But the term "harm" has not generally been limited to murder or battery. It has also been applied to theft. If I take property that is deemed to belong to another person, I am said to be guilty of theft and to have caused harm to that other person.

But now we have to have an ethic that defines what private property actually is, and the libertarian has none. That is to say, there is nothing in the libertarian formulation of freedom that demands one definition of property over another. Libertarianism must look to some other philosophy for a definition of property. If I accept a socialist definition of property, I become a libertarian socialist. If I accept a capitalist formula, I become a libertarian capitalist. If I accept a traditionalist definition of property, I become a libertarian conservative. The term is always an adjective, never a noun.

I make this distinction because there is a political theory called "anarcho-capitalism" or "market anarchism" which claims to be a libertarian school. This ideology presumes to have an objective understanding of property. In fact, however, it merely pre-supposes the capitalist definition. This is an important distinction. Capitalism, after all, is not an ideology. Nor is it a philosophy. It is a social and economic movement. A definition of property that is most useful and beneficial to capitalism will be most useful and beneficial to capitalism. That is all we can say about it. It has a pragmatic, not an ethical, foundation.

Now I realize that some libertarians would object to this. Some would claim to have an objective definition of property based on the philosophy of John Locke. This raises many problems that are too numerous to be dealt with here. I will limit my critique to the simple observation that Locke's stand on private property is not objective. It is neither self-evident nor logically compelling.

Locke argues that when an individual has mixed his labor with an object of nature that object becomes entirely the property of that individual. By mixing one's labor we acquire the right to alienate the entirety of that object from the community of men to which it was previously available. But this is hardly self-evident. It seems far more obvious to claim that if I alienate an object of nature from the community, I owe the community some compensation. Otherwise, the community retains a share of the product and no alienation takes place.

But Locke seems to anticipate this because he claims that all the value of the product derives from the labor. Without the mixing of the labor, a product of nature, including land, is essentially worthless. Therefore, nothing of value has been alienated.

But this is tantamount to claiming that natural resources are a free good. They are like the air we breathe that is so abundant and so ubiquitous that no effort is required to attain it. Yet this is clearly not the case, and no argument for self-evidence can give us a right to private property.

Nor is the argument logically compelling. After all, the expressions "alienate from" and "mix one's labor with" bear no logical or tautological connection. They are entirely different concepts. The one does not in any way contain the seeds of the other. Thus, the Lockean argument cannot produce an objective "right" to private property. It is merely Locke's opinion and not one that any thinking individual is compelled to accept.

Now at this point, the anarcho-capitalist might put forward another argument. A right to private property must be accepted because it works. Capitalism has been of the greatest benefit to mankind. It has brought more people up from poverty and produced more material wealth than any other system known to mankind. Certainly, it has vastly outstripped all government-run schemes. Where socialism has led to poverty and stasis, capitalism has produced wealth and progress.

We will accept this for the sake of argument, and we will overlook the presumption that material wealth is necessarily good. But we can't help pointing out that the "right" to private property is no longer justified as a sacrosanct and personal freedom, but as a social relationship that benefits the community as a whole. It is now recognized, not as product of nature, but of society.

This, of course, is exactly the conservative position. Private property can be tolerated because it solves social problems. There was a time when the man with forty acres and a mule was not dependent on the rest of the community for his survival. He could grow enough food to support himself and his large family in abundance and still have enough left over to contribute to the well-being of the community through taxation.

The weaver who purchased a machine to assist in his craft might be able to increase his productivity by ten times. If he buys another machine he might be able to employ another weaver at many times the income that man was previously making and still have money left over to pay for the machine and produce a profit. He might even produce so much that he has to reduce the price to sell all of his production. This is a benefit to everyone, and so we are happy to pass laws against the theft of his factory or of his products. But we pass such laws for the benefit of the community. We create a "right" for the individual because that right serves a social purpose.

But a right bestowed by the community can be removed by that same community. Or it can be amended or reformed. Regulation on the use of property or on the transactions of business can be promulgated to promote the common interest in those situations where the property right is deemed to be harmful.

Now at this point, some libertarians might object . They might claim that what I am describing as "conservatism" is little more than socialism. After all, socialists claim that property is social to begin with. And while there are a few socialists who think that property should always be held in common, there are many socialists who are quite willing to accept privately-owned property as long as it is subject to socialist regulation. And, indeed, that is exactly the position taken by that infamous off-shoot of socialism called fascism! "Conservatism" as it is defined here, the libertarian might argue, is nothing more than another statist ideology.

Such a claim misses the point. Conservatism doesn't deny the existence of private property rights. It merely claims that those rights derive from social convention. But the social order itself is constituted, in part, by those rights. Conservatives strongly believe in the preservation of the social order. While it is permissible to tamper with such rights in principle, it is dangerous to do so in practice.

Where a socialist might be willing to tinker with property rights as freely as he would with discretionary items in the annual budget, the conservative would reform the property right only under the most compelling circumstances. After all, to change our rights is to change who we are. A transformation of rights is a transformation of society.

For the socialist, that is the entire point. The socialist has a vision of a better society in which all of the ills of the society will be abolished, but all the good things will be retained. In the mind of the socialist all socialist policies, however tentative or compromised by circumstance, still have this vision as their ultimate goal.

The conservative knows better. The conservative understands that our rights are an achievement of our culture. They are not God-given. They are not embedded in nature. They are not written in the stars. They emerged from the strife of our experience, and they are protected by the wisdom of our past.

One does not tamper 'willy-nilly' with our rights, because our rights are not encapsulated in a few phrases like "free speech" or "freedom of religion." These terms are subject to a wide variety of definitions. But in our culture these, and all of our rights, are defined with extreme precision through our traditions. And they are protected, with reasonable success, through our institutions.

If you destroy these traditions and overthrow these institutions, you destroy these rights. A few ill-defined terms on a piece of paper do not guarantee your rights. A few newly-created institutions with ill-defined powers, cannot protect them.

It is usage, not legislative language, that determines the powers of an institution. It is usage, not dictionary definitions, that determine the meaning of our rights. When traditional authority falls, traditional usages are abandoned, and new meanings must emerge. Where new meanings must emerge, controversies abound. And where controversies abound, force decides the issue.

The conservative does not trust the socialist no matter how exemplary his personal conduct may be. He does not trust the socialist, because he does not trust the socialist vision. The socialist has ideas, but he does not have experience. No matter how shrewd and successful he may be in political affairs, he does not have the experience of generations of men. He cannot anticipate the "blowback." He cannot know the unintended consequences of his schemes. He can destroy, but he cannot build.

The socialist, while readily accepting the libertarian notion of natural rights, multiplies these rights, in his own mind, until they reach perfection. Yet he fails to see that such ever-increasing rights cannot have been natural rights in the first instance.

But this is of scant concern to the socialist. It is sufficient that these rights exist in the socialist vision of perfection. The socialist does not rest his vision on logic but on compassion. For the socialist, an expansion of rights means an expansion of humane treatment for everyone. Who can argue with that?

The problem with the socialist "humaneness" is human nature. Not only does it require the perfectibility of human nature, it requires that that perfectibility be precisely in accord with the socialist vision. Chaucer's "perfect, gentle, knight," being a warrior, would not likely qualify.

But this is why logic is a necessary, though certainly not sufficient, part of public policy. Because human nature cannot become something other than what it is. It is one thing to say that humans have a capacity for compassion and quite another thing to say that it is their essence.

But it is even more problematic to assert a human tendency toward abstract compassion. Our compassion for friends, relatives, and loved ones is palpable. But for strangers it is less obvious, and for enemies it is scarcely in evidence. Indeed, the Christian command to "love your enemies," is a call to transform our nature. It expresses the essence of divinity, not humanity. And it is, quintessentially, a personal transformation, not a political one.

The simple fact is that humans love humanity until they feel threatened by it. As the saying goes, "A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged." Our capacity for compassion is selective, and our capacity for hatred is innate.

What inspires our hatred more than the loss of our loves? Those who deprive us, or threaten to deprive us, of those we love most, quickly become the object of our hatred and our scorn. Love and hate are not polar opposites. They are a unity of opposites. They represent the yin and yang of our emotional experience. We cannot have compassion without love, and we cannot love without creating the capacity for hate.

Love, compassion, hatred, and fear are not abstract principles. They are highly personal sentiments. We do not love humanity. We love human beings. And when our loved ones are taken from us, we do not seek compassion, we seek revenge. We hate because we love, and no appeal to some abstract principle of compassion will lead us to peace when we fervently desire war.

But the socialist seeks not merely to expand rights but to deliver them. For the socialist, it is not sufficient that the individual be free from oppression. His rights must also free him from nature. Miraculously, the individual acquires a right to food, shelter, clothing, education, health care, and other social benefits.

Individual rights become social obligations. Social obligations must be enforced by coercive power, and the legitimate use of coercive power is the definition of government power. The idea that legitimate force can be implemented by "anarchic" institutions is completely absurd. To claim that such an institution is not a government does not change the reality.

But the state has one power and one power only. The power of the state is the power to commandeer the energy and resources of the people. The state cannot grow the food, sew the clothing, build the houses, or teach the classes that are necessary to procure the "rights" envisioned by the modern welfare state. Only people can do these things, and those people will do them only if they are forced to so or are rewarded for it.

We are fortunate that our modern system of money and banking allows most of our social obligations to be met through taxation. We no longer have to spend so many days a year working on the king's highway or digging a canal. Even military conscription is limited to major wars.

This is both efficient and liberating. But it also tends to obscure the fact our labor is being coerced. For the socialist it obscures the fact that one person's "right" is another person's obligation. If a am entitled to health care, someone else is obligated to empty my bed pan.

The point is that such "rights" are not liberating at all. They merely redefine existing personal and social responsibilities. The problem is, they redefine them excessively. Because these "rights" are presumed to be necessary because they are financially unaffordable for the poor and the unfortunate in our society. But society has always recognized the need to help the poor and the unfortunate among their members. Often the resources to do so were minimal, and the state wasn't always the main provider, but the social obligation was recognized. It is the wealth of the modern world, not some unique socialist compassion, that makes the socialist vision conceivable.

But the socialist goes on to demand that such social obligations be universalized. Everyone must be brought under the protection of the state. Currently fifteen to twenty per cent of the population of the United States is not covered by some form of health insurance. The conservative might acknowledge the need to do something about that fifteen to twenty per cent. But the socialist insists that we need a "national health care plan." And this universal vision can be multiplied many times over in demands for such programs as a "guaranteed living wage," and "guaranteed employment." Such demands can be met only through large increases in taxation and a massive increase in state power. This is the socialist vision – a vision of perfection that empowers socialist intellectuals but reduces the mass of humanity into cogs in a machine. For in this scenario, even the unfortunate are denied the dignity of their misfortune and the virtue of their gratitude.

Above all, the socialist vision is a vision of national greatness. It is a vision of a nation achieving greatness through the pursuit of national goals. It is no different, in principle, from the vision of conquest so admired by the empire-builders. But a nation cannot be great if its people are oppressed. And, as we will show in the next section, such national goals are incompatible with human freedom, ultimately destructive of greatness, and a perversion of the legitimate function of the state.

I started this blog in order to respond to a blogger named "libertybob." As my post turned out to be way  too large for the townhall.com blog, I was invited to start my own and decided it would be a good idea. Here is libertybob's post and my response to it:

"Ron Paul Supporters
Hey, I've got to admit that he is looking like the best candidate right now, on pretty much everything. The one hang up I have about Paul is his foreign policy. Its easy to speak in platitudes like "our founders wanted a non-interventionist foreign policy..." But how does that translate into policy? Like all candidates, his website is pretty, but virtually devoid of substance. I am really troubled by what I have heard from him regarding Iran.

Are there any Ron Paul supporters out there who can explain, or point me in the direction of some more information, about what he would base his foreign policy on? Specifically, I want to know about
-Iraq
-Iran
-Mideast in General
-Cuba
-Venezuela
-China
-Russia

That's my only hang up on Paul. If someone could get me the info or explain it to me, I'd appreciate it."

Response to libertybob

Ron Paul says the U.S. should maintain friendly relations with all countries. Beyond that, I do not feel free to speak for the Ron Paul campaign directly. There are too many people on the internet who are already claiming that RP will do this or do that and they are often incorrect even though they are trying to help his campaign. Here is a link to RP's web site post on war and foreign policy:

http://www.ronpaul2008.com/issues/war-and-foreign-policy/

Having said that I cannot speak for RP, however, let me tell you what I understand RP's position to mean in greater detail recognizing that it is my opinion and only a logical development of Paul's position and not necessarily exactly the position that he takes.

The first thing we need to recognize is that the U.S. has no conflict in any vital interests with any other country in the world. We are so used to hearing about all these foreign leaders and groups being demonized, that we overlook the question of what their interests are, and we forget to ask what, exactly, they are complaining about. Often these complaints center around our interference with their internal affairs or with developments in their regions.

I'm not talking about al qaeda or various terrorist groups, I'm talking about the nations themselves.

What conflict in vital interests do we have eith Iran? Our interests would best be served if we could buy their oil, and if they could produce more of it more cheaply. Our currently policy has pushed the price of oil sky-high which damages our own economy while enriching Iran and the regime that we purport to hate.

Which raises another issue called "blowback." Blowback is the idea that our interventions often come back to haunt us by producing the very thing they were intended to prevent. or even something worse. RP's web site note s this in the case of al qaeda. Bin laden and many of his associates were trained and equipped, in part, by the U.S. in our efforts to oppose the Soviets in Afghanistan. Today, we are fighting al qaeda of Iraq. But there was no al qaeda of Iraq until after we invaded that country.

We hear much of Iran's nuclear program. But Iran is only insisting on the right to enrich uranium to commercial grade. But that right is guaranteed by the Nuclear non-proliferation treaty which Iran has signed and complied with. We have also signed the treaty and it obligates us to help Iran develop peaceful uses of nuclear energy.

But we are told that Iran has a secret nuclear weapons program. The CIA estimates that Iran could develop a nuclear weapon in 5-10 years. But the CIA has been giving that same estimate ever since I can remember.

Far from insisting that Iran should not exercise her rights under the NPT, we should be encouraging her to remain in that treaty structure. At most, we should want more intrusive inspections than are required under the treaty to assure that the new technology is not diverted for weapons' purposes. But Iran has offered that, and we have turned it down.

But what threat does Iran pose to us? The biggest threat that they pose is to our troops in Iraq. We never should have gone into Iraq in the first place, and the Iranians are delighted that we did. We overthrew their greatest enemy and put their best friends, the Shiite Muslims, into power. We now know that Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi Shiite who provided so much of the bogus intelligence and optimistic scenarios about an Iraq invasion, was an Iranian agent! This is blowback big-time.

Some argue that Iran poses a threat to Israel. But the Israelis are very well-armed and can take of themselves. Some Israeli apologists insist that Iran represents an "existential threat" to Israel, but this is denied even by Israel's foreign minister, Tipzi Livni, and by the former head of Mossad.

But why should the U.S. go to war for Israel anyway? We have no formal alliance with them, and no strategic interest that is threatened by an Israeli war. Israel's ultimate survival depends, in any case, on making peace with her enemies.

South Korea has twice the population and about 10 times the GDP of North Korea. Why do we need troops there to help defend the South? Besides, the South wants to enter negotiations with the North toward a peaceful re-unification of the country. It is the U.S. that is opposing such negotiations.

Of course, we all know that Kim Jong Il is a madman. We've been fed this nonsense for so long. He's so insane that the South Koreans think they can actually negotiate re-unification with him.

He's so insane that he agreed to give up his nuclear weapons program in exchange for economic aid.

NATO was founded to oppose the expansionist possibilities of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. But the Cold War ended fifteen years ago, and Russia is a weak survivor of that former empire. Why, then, should NATO continue to exist? We promised the Soviet Union that we would not expand NATO to include the former Warsaw Pact countries. That's why Gorbachev tore down the wall. But the Clinton Administration did just that on the thin ground that the Soviet Union no longer existed, and we weren't bound by that promise to Russia or to the successor to the Soviet Union, the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Of course, we weren't LEGALLY bound, but the inevitable outcome was to make an enemy of Russia and to push her into an alliance with China which we now exists in the form of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

Sorry to be so wordy, I could go on and on. The point is that our interventionism in the world is unnecessary and often counterproductive.

As for "spreading democracy," we can no more spread democracy than we can spread self-reliance through more welfare programs. A "democracy" that arises through American support is dependent on that support and not entirely on the support of its own people. So it isn't really a democracy at all. It's an American client state with a democratic FORM of government but lacking the substance.

The logic of Paul's position would likely lead to the end of sanctions on Cuba and to improved relations with Venezuela.  Paul would probably not put an anti-missile system in the Czech Republic and Poland as the current administration is proposing to do and which upsets the Russians no end. He would almost certainly withdraw our troops from Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and other Central Asian Republics. He would likely establish more friendly relations with Russia and draw them away from a full-blown alliance with China.

Paul voted FOR the war in Afghanistan. I do not know how he would handle that, but it, alone, is enough of a problem for the U.S. to deal with, especially militarily. It is likely that he would enlist the aid of IRAN, which is more than anxious to develop friendly relations with the U.S.