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Sunday, July 22, 2007

Old Right isolationism, then and now

Robert A. Taft: the Ron Paul of the 1930s (and 40s, and 50s)?

I don’t think the Democrats have any intention to change our policies in the Middle East. I want the antiwar position to be traditional, conservative, and constitutional and not only for the far Left. I don’t object to the Left being opposed to the war. But that Michael Moore image is not going to persuade housewives. I think a lot of Republicans have forgotten their traditional position of being antiwar.

That's a quote from Ron Paul, the antiwar Republican who has been attracting a bit of attention lately with his seemingly quixotic Presidential candidacy, from the Michael Brendan Dougherty article cited below.

I've been thinking about Ron Paul and the limited but significant role of isolationism in US politics. This post relies on the following articles:

The Antiwar, Anti-Abortion, Anti-Drug-Enforcement-Administration, Anti-Medicare Candidacy of Dr. Ron Paul by Christoper Caldwell New York Times 07/22/07

'NYT': Ron Paul for President -- Of the 'Wackos'? Editor and Publisher 07/20/07.

Ron Paul vs. the New World Order by David Neiwert, Orcinus blog 06/08/07

Desperate Times by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. New York Review of Books 11/24/1983 issue (behind subscription), reviewing a book that focuses on Franklin Roosevelt's relations with liberal isolationists in the 1930s, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 1932-45 by Wayne Cole. (Most isolationists were conservatives.)

Lone Star by Michael Brendan Dougherty The American Conservative 06/18/07.

Andrew Bacevich is right to point out that "isolationism" is used as a bogeyman by both major parties to brand critics of some international commitment they support as being unreasonable. The term "isolationism" gained a permanently negative connotation during the 1930s, along with "appeasement", another concept associated with policies toward Hitler Germany that were later widely understood to have been misguided.

And it's true that within the two major parties and in the foreign policy think tanks and the commentariat, Old Right isolationism as represented in the 1930s by politicians like Herbert Hoover or Robert Taft has an essentially negligible influence. But with 70% or so of the American public soured on the Iraq War, Old Right isolationism as represented by Ron Paul does have the potential to act as a kind of Trojan Horse to give Republicans an excuse to keep voting Republican despite their doubts and worries about the war. And to act as a way to "mainstream" some radical-right ideas, something that Ron Paul has been adept at doing for a while, anyway.

As David Neiwert puts it:

Ron Paul has made a career out of transmitting extremist beliefs, particularly far-right conspiracy theories about a looming "New World Order," into the mainstream of public discourse by reframing and repackaging them for wider consumption, mostly by studiously avoiding the more noxious and often racist elements of those beliefs. Along the way, he has built a long record of appearing before and lending the credibility of his office to a whole array of truly noxious organizations, and has a loyal following built in no small part on members of those groups.

Christoper Caldwell's report gives a glimpse at Paul's far-right positions and fans:

Like [Patrick] Buchanan, Paul draws on forgotten traditions. His top aides are unimpeachably Republican but stand at a distance from the party as it has evolved over the decades. His chief of staff, Tom Lizardo, worked for Pat Robertson and Bill Miller Jr. (the son of Barry Goldwater’s vice-presidential nominee). His national campaign organizer, Lew Moore, worked for the late congressman Jack Metcalf of Washington State, another Goldwaterite. At the grass roots, Paul’s New Hampshire primary campaign stresses gun rights and relies on anti-abortion and tax activists from the organizations of Buchanan and the state’s former maverick senator, Bob Smith.

Paul admires Robert Taft, the isolationist Ohio senator known during the Truman administration as Mr. Republican, who tried to rally Republicans against United States participation in NATO. Taft lost the Republican nomination in 1952 to Dwight Eisenhower and died the following year. “Now, of course,” Paul says, “I quote Eisenhower when he talks about the military-industrial complex. But I quote Taft when he suits my purposes too.” Particularly on NATO, from which Paul, too, would like to withdraw. ...

Victor Carey, a 45-year-old, muscular, mustachioed self-described “patriot” who wears a black baseball cap with a skull and crossbones on it, drove up from Sykesville, Md., to show his support for Paul. He laid out some of his concerns. “The people who own the Federal Reserve own the oil companies, they own the mass media, they own the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, they’re part of the Bilderbergers, and unfortunately their spiritual practices are very wicked and diabolical as well,” Carey said. “They go to a place out in California known as the Bohemian Grove, and there’s been footage obtained by infiltration of what their practices are. And they do mock human sacrifices to an owl-god called Moloch. This is true. Go research it yourself.”

Two grandmothers from North Carolina who painted a Winnebago red, white and blue were traveling around the country, stumping for Ron Paul, defending the Constitution and warning about the new “North American Union.” Asked whether this is something that would arise out of Nafta, Betty Smith of Chapel Hill, N.C., replied: “It’s already arisen. They’re building the highway. Guess what! The Spanish company building the highway — they’re gonna get the tolls. Giuliani’s law firm represents that Spanish company. Giuliani’s been anointed a knight by the Queen. Guess what! Read the Constitution. That’s not allowed!”

"Paul is not a conspiracy theorist, but he has a tendency to talk in that idiom." Which in Paul's case, is another way of saying what Neiwert says more directly, that he transmits far-right conspiracy theories and other notions ""into the mainstream of public discourse by reframing and repackaging them for wider consumption, mostly by studiously avoiding the more noxious and often racist elements of those beliefs."

This passage near the end of Caldwell's article is also revealing of what Ron Paul's politics are about:

One evening in mid-June, 86 members of a newly formed Ron Paul Meetup group gathered in a room in the Pasadena convention center. It was a varied crowd, preoccupied by the war, including many disaffected Democrats. Via video link from Virginia, Paul’s campaign chairman, Kent Snyder, spoke to the group “of a coming-together of the old guard and the new.” Then Connie Ruffley, co-chairwoman of United Republicans of California (UROC), addressed the crowd. UROC was founded during the 1964 presidential campaign to fight off challenges to Goldwater from Rockefeller Republicanism. Since then it has lain dormant but not dead — waiting, like so many other old right-wing groups, for someone or something to kiss it back to life. UROC endorsed Paul at its spring convention.

That night, Ruffley spoke about her past with the John Birch Society and asked how many in the room were members (quite a few, as it turned out). She referred to the California senator Dianne Feinstein as “Fine-Swine,” and got quickly to Israel, raising the Israeli attack on the American Naval signals ship Liberty during the Six-Day War. Some people were pleased. Others walked out. Others sent angry e-mails that night. Several said they would not return. The head of the Pasadena Meetup group, Bill Dumas, sent a desperate letter to Paul headquarters asking for guidance:

"We're in a difficult position of working on a campaign that draws supporters from laterally opposing points of view, and we have the added bonus of attracting every wacko fringe group in the country. And in a Ron Paul Meetup many people will consider each other 'wackos' for their beliefs whether that is simply because they're liberal, conspiracy theorists, neo-Nazis, evangelical Christian, etc. ... We absolutely must focus on Ron’s message only and put aside all other agendas, which anyone can save for the next 'Star Trek' convention or whatever."

Now, anyone who's ever been involved in organizing public political meetings know that it's not at all unusual for kooks to show up. But the far-right brand of ideologues (kooks and otherwise) are the basic consituency for Paul's ideas.

Arthur Schlesinger put his finger on the meaning of Old Right isolationism and its fundamental kinship to Cheney-Bush style aggressive internationalism and preventive war in his 1983 article:

Historic isolationism meant not autarky, but unilateralism —no "entangling alliances" in Jefferson's phrase; unrestricted freedom of political and diplomatic action. Many contemporary neo-isolationists [he's talking about liberals like William Fulbright that some referred to as isolationists or neo-isolationist] are quite ready to approve entanglements that they believe protect American interests, like the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the United Nations. Traditional isolationism would reject such entanglement per se, whether in the form of alliances or of membership in collective security organizations. (my emphasis)

In the book he was reviewing, the author criticized the Roosevelt administration for painting such an ugly picture of the isolationists of his time:

The crucial device was the "guilt-by-association pattern of identifying leading isolationists with Hitler and the Nazis." [Quoting Wayne Cole] The administration did this with such success that by 1941, Cole ontends, "isolationists were widely viewed as narrow, self-serving, partisan, conservative, antidemocratic, anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi, fifth columnist, and even treasonous." This may put it a little strongly, though that is rather the way the reader of Ralph Ingersoll's PM, and even to a degree of Helen Reid's Herald Tribune, was instructed to regard isolationists. Professor Cole concedes that isolationist rhetoric depicting Roosevelt as a warmonger, a dictator, a pawn of the British or of the Jews, was equally vicious. (my emphasis)

William Appleman Williams used some of that Old Right isolationist polemic against FDR in his 1980 book, Empire As A Way Of Life, that I recently discussed here.

Schlesinger criticized the Wayne Cole book he was reviewing for failing to understand the essentially conservative, unilateralist nature of the isolationism of the 1930s, an identity which became more pronounced over time:

Nor does he adequately recognize, I believe, the direction in which the isolationist movement was propelled by its own internal dynamics. His emphasis on the Western progressives overplays the liberal role in isolationism. An analysis that took, say, Herbert Hoover rather than Burton K. Wheeler as the representative isolationist would have been equally, probably even more, valid. For, as Professor Cole concedes, isolationism was stronger in the Republican than in the Democratic party, as it was stronger in the business community than in the labor movement. Many isolationists were fanatically anti-New Deal from the start. Even the Western progressives, as they became obsessed with isolationism, tended to move to the right on domestic issues. Wheeler, Nye, Hiram Johnson, Henrik Shipstead, Philip La Follette (who by 1944 was backing Douglas MacArthur for president) all lost their commitment to domestic reform. Among the senatorial progressives only George W. Norris, who abandoned isolationism well before Pearl Harbor, and Robert La Follette, who abandoned it after the war, kept the New Deal faith. The rest marched in increasingly nationalist-rightist directions, not without sinister undertones. Professor Cole notes occasional anti-Semitic outbursts among the isolationists but does not see how, had Pearl Harbor not intervened, anti-Semitism would almost inevitably have grown as part of the isolationist pattern. (my emphasis)

Ron Paul is very much in this Old Right isolationist tradition. Dougherty describes Paul's general outlook:

Beneath pictures of Austrian economists Frederick Von Hayek and Ludwig Von Mises, he will eat his lunch alone and in peace.

Those are two "free-market" conservatives that became popular among doctrinaire conservatives in the 1950s, and are still patron saints of "libertarianism". They are still referred to as the "Austrian school", which is pretty ironice, since Austria has one of the most extensive social-democratic systems in the world and is also high among the richest countries per capita in Europe.

When Paul does propose legislation, it is simple, direct, and radical. He’s compiled an impressive list of bills that remain ignored to this day. H.R.1146 : To end membership of the United States in the United Nations. H.R.776: To provide that human life shall be deemed to exist from conception. H.R.1658: To ensure that the courts interpret the Constitution in the manner that the Framers intended.

His cheerful consistency doesn’t end there. Paul not only votes against nearly all government spending, he has refused to be the beneficiary of it as well. As a physician specializing in obstetrics and gynecology, he has delivered over 4,000 babies. He accepted no money from Medicare or Medicaid, often working for free for needy patients. With his support, his five children finished school without subsidized federal student loans. He has refused a congressional pension.

Monetary policy is the issue that brought Paul into politics in the ’70s. Having read deeply in the Austrian school of economics, he was incensed at Nixon for going off the gold standard and ran in a special House election in the 22nd district of Texas. (my emphasis)

Like his John Birch Society fans, Ron Paul is completely opposed to the United Nations and even to US membership in it. Cheney-Bush unilaterialism nominally supports the UN while sneering at it and proudly disregarding it in practice. Paul's Old Right isolationism opposes it outright. The same unilateralist-nationalist assumption underlies both.

His "liberatarianism" is flexible enough to toe the line on the Christian Right's hardline approach to opposing abortion. That business about the gold standard is also an obsession of the far right like the Birchers. I would be curious to know what might turn up if some enterprising reporter checked more closely into those charity medical services he claims he provided.

Dougherty notes that when Ron Paul decided not to run for re-election to his Congressional seat in 1984, the Republican elected to replace him was Tom DeLay.

While Paul considers himself a staunch free trader, he opposed CAFTA and deplored its predecessor, NAFTA. Paul explains, "I was on the side of the protectionists, and I’m not a protectionist. It’s not true free trade. It's special-interest trade. It's managed trade. ... I didn’t like the trade deal because it was another level of government and a loss of sovereignty."

He was opposed to NAFTA not primarily because of its possible negative effects on American workers or their unions or the environment, but because Old Right isolationists view pretty much any kind of treaty that restricts US unilateralism in any way to be treasonous.

As Doughterty describes it, Paul's position on immigration is standard authoritarian-nativist:

On immigration, Paul finds himself on the side of restrictionists. On LewRockwell.com, Paul outlined a six-step approach: 1) Physically secure the border. 2) Enforce current visa laws. 3) Reject amnesty. 4) End welfare state incentives to immigrants. 5) End birthright citizenship. 6) Standardize legal immigration rules and waiting periods.

Notice that severe restrictions on employers of undocumented immigrants is not among the list. Presumably, that would be a violation of the "Austrian school" free-market principles.

Ron Paul provides a way for Republicans worried about the effects of the Iraq War on their taxes and on the pressure it might create for a military draft to say that, "hey, the Democrats with their "internationalist" outlook on foreign policy are just as bad as the Republicans if not worse. Voting for them won't make any difference on foreign policy. And the Republicans are against foreigners and taxes and black people and unions and public schools, so I'm gonna keep voting for them."

However much his position on the Iraq War may coincide with that of more mainstream or even "left" positions, Ron Paul's brand of isolationism is the hard right brand. And a lot of grim, hardcore rightwing Republican positions on economic and social issues come with it. As well as a unilateralist nationalism that may differ on some specifics from the Cheney-Bush approach but shares the same destructive assumptions.

Tags: isolationism, old right, ron paul

posted at 3:26:00 PM by Bruce Miller

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