Liberals live in another world. They make it seem as if we just listened to them we could eliminate poverty, hate, rising sea levels, and basically any problem that exists. They feel a utopia is within our reach if we would just enact their simple reforms. Poverty, greed, and sickness are simply things that can be legislated out of existence with the right regulations or social programs. Their solutions for these problems may vary by name, but they are always the same: more government. This may be a caricature, but it is not necessarily an unfair one.
This problem of idealizing the world, trying to force a perfect world upon an imperfect one, does happen on the right side of the political spectrum as well; however, it tends to be concentrated in one area, or more specifically around one person: Ron Paul. Ron Paul believes that if we just followed his philosophy all of the world's problems would disappear.
As those on the left feel more government could solve all problems, Ron Paul and his supporters feel all we need is less government (practically none) and all of our problems would just disappear.
Ron Paul is correct that the Federal government is too large and that it interferes in people’s lives in ways it has no business dealing with but he is misled by his overreaching trust in limited government. For example, Ron Paul does not believe that we should have any drugs that are illegal. Now I will not argue that there are no drawbacks of our current drug policies, but should we really be considering legalizing heroin, crack, or methamphetamine? I've heard Ron Paul, Milton Friedman, and other economists and politicians argue for legalization of these drugs. The basis of their argument is that they feel few people would choose to use these drugs even if they were legal. Now, although I don't think that everyone and their dog would become heroin addicts if it were legal, I do believe that heroin use (I'm just using heroin as an example here) would go up considerably, especially among certain demographics. Right now crack and heroin are extremely expensive and, as far as I can tell, pretty difficult to come by. If it became cheap, legal, and readily available, then clearly drug use would go up; people would become addicted, and I haven't heard many stories of productive heroin addicts.
My point here isn't that I love everything about our drug laws or the FDA or DEA but mainly that we can't just have a blanket assumption that less government is always better than more government. Ron Paul and his supporters have that blanket assumption.
Here are a few examples of Ron Paul's solutions for America's problems:
Foreign Policy? American intervention is the source of all problems. If we do nothing, problem solved!
Gay Marriage? No real issue here either, the government shouldn't be involved in marriage. Problem Solved!
Economic Recessions? No real issue here either, we just need to get the government out of our monetary system and all of our problems will disappear.
Taxes? Who needs 'em?!?!
No congress would pass Ron Paul’s agenda, even if elected President. What would he do? Would he work to shrink government in any and all ways available? He would not. The man never votes for anything that he doesn’t agree with 100%. If a bill came to his desk that shrank the Department of Education down to nothing but a desk in a closet he would feel it unconstitutional because it didn’t abolish the Department. That’s what we call crazy. Ron Paul didn’t support, and still does not support, NAFTA because this free-trade agreement wasn’t free enough. This is a bill that freed trade between Canada, Mexico, and the US but Ron Paul would not vote for it in part because it was only a ‘managed-trade’ agreement. The bill was good enough for Milton Friedman but not for Ron Paul.
This is why I could never support Ron Paul, especially for the GOP nomination. He views the world differently than it actually is. He doesn’t understand that perfection is not within our reach in this life. Ron Paul and Barack Obama attract a lot of the same people because they both offer the same fantasy; just different ways of achieving it. Ron Paul offers a utopia of limited government and Barack Obama offers a utopia with lots of government. There are no utopias.
By Jared Christopherson
Edited by Zack Christopherson
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