I can understand that people would not want to vote for Ron Paul.
What I can't understand is why people are so convinced that we have to settle for the Obamas and the Romneys and the rest of the Pinhead Country Clubbers.
I can understand why people would argue against anti-interventionism. I can even understand why people would argue for a need for covert action despite blowback risks and all the rest.
What I can't understand is why those people can't put up, or insist that the parties put up, candidates with intellectual and moral oomph equivalent to Paul's to put forth their ideas.
I can understand that people fear weirdos and radicals and those who have "out there" ideas. What I can't understand is why they are so damn ignorant that they can't understand that "non-center" and "non-mainstream" are no more likely to be "weird" or "radical" or "out there" than the center itself.
Well, actually I can understand. I can understand why these things are "the way of the country" now. America no longer insists on candidates with oomph, America presumptively rejects anyone who attempts to insist on oomph, because we have institutionalized historical ignorance. We are now on the third generation of severely watered down civic and historical education. That third generation (Gen Y, if you will) is being taught their Constitution and their history and their basic thinking skills is being taught by the first generation (we Boomers). So outside of a few super-geezers of Paul's generation, and the minority that takes responsibility for their own education.
The truth of the matter is, unless you educate yourself, you're fucked. Because not only do your teachers not teach what they ought to be teaching you,
they themselves are largely unable to teach it. They're too damn ignorant themselves.
Put it this way: do you have any idea how many PhDs in history, political science, economics, sociology, philosophy, and education, much less those with PhDs in more "practical" disciplines of business and engineering, have never browsed, much less read carefully ANY of the following: The Federalist Papers, The Rights of Man, Reflections on the Revolution in France, Democracy in America, The Wealth of Nations, Two Treatises on Government, and Common Sense. Oh, they might be able to name the author of each and give a vague academic sound bite with an -ism or two in it. (And I expect they'd have more trouble even naming the authors of Civilization and its Discontents, Social Statics, Democracy and Education, and Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, and On Liberty, or putting them in the correct half-century.) And we'll not even mention the extent of our ignorance of the Bible.
I'd be amused that people think I'm especially learned in these things, if that were not so tragic. Because, by the standards of 1800 or even 1900, I'd be a mediocre thinker. I probably am in the 95th or 99th percentile when it comes to actual historical knowledge of the above, but I doubt I'd be in the top half were I living a century or two ago.
So is it any surprise that virtually none of our political conversation recognizes that the Constitution was designed to limit state power rather than enable it "on behalf of the people," that no less than Washington argued for as little international political connections as possible, that the right to keep and bear arms had nothing to do with hunting or protection against burglars, that Adam Smith argued against the law's special treatment of corporations, that many of the leading supporters of the move toward compulsory education (and virtually all of the political money) were doing so out of a desire to have nicely conforming, unquestioning mass labor content with bread and circuses?
We have been sowing the seeds of ignorance and mediocre political thinking for three generations now.
No, I'm not surprised.
The zombies aren't coming. They're already here. In all those 3-bedroom suburban homes, office cubicles, news desk chairs, and sub-sub-committee hearing room.
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Romans 12:2 (NKJV)