Ron Paul in Iowa

I glanced at an article this morning about Ron Paul in Iowa.  The question was: Will he win the caucus?  The answer: If he was anybody else, yes.  But as a libertarian, he doesn't sit well with the evangelicals.

My response: What?  Ron Paul a libertarian?  Do these news agencies do fact checking?

For a while, I thought Paul was a libertarian.  That's what he was always described as.  But actually looking at his policies and beliefs, it's pretty obvious that it's not true.  And this also serves to illustrate how far the two parties have strayed from their traditional beliefs.

Have you ever seen the two-dimensional map of political ideology?  On one axis it goes conservative-liberal on economic policies, and the other goes conservative-liberal on social policies.  Conservative on both is a Conservative - the Republican party.  Liberal on both is a Liberal - the Democratic party.  Liberal on social and conservative on economic is Libertarian.  And conservative on social and liberal on economic is Authoritarian.

This all seems to make sense, although it does grossly oversimplify things.  But better this than the one dimensional Left-Right line.

Let's first look at Ron Paul.  He is decidedly conservative on economic issues.  And social issues?  Paul is also moderately conservative on social issues.  He tries to downplay social issues and focus on economic issues, but he still has those conservative social issues.  That would place him as a Conservative - right where the Republican party 'should' be sitting.  So where is the Republican party?

First we should probably talk about what exactly it means to be conservative/liberal on economic/social issues.  On social issues, I think it's a bit easier to see.  Although my description of both of these will display my libertarian flavoring.  Socially conservative is believing that the government should step in to control the social morals of society.  Socially liberal is believing the government should not enforce any one group's morals on the rest of society.  While most people stop there, I feel there is a bit more to say about this.  It simply isn't Evangelicals-conservative while athiests-liberal or even oppose same-sex marriage-conservative with support same-sex marriage-liberal.  While both of those conservative examples are true, if you go too far in the other direction, you swing back around and end up at conservative again.  Everyone should go with my beliefs and banning same-sex marriage should be forced on everyone - Conservative.  Government should protect people's individual liberty and allow same sex marriage - Liberal.  Everyone should go with my beliefs and allowing same-sex marriage should be forced on everyone - Conservative.

What about economic issues?  I label conservative as free-market capitalism.  And moving towards the liberal end gets more and more government involvement.  That means that socialism is on the far end of liberal.  It also means that crony-capitalism falls into moderately liberal.  Crony capitalism being government stepping in and interfering for the benefit of select businesses.  But enough talk about my political ideology labeling (we'll leave more of that for another blog post).  Back to where is the Republican party?

The Republican party is socially conservative and economically moderately liberal.  They want to force 'conservative' morals on everyone and believe in crony capitalism.  Most of the Republican candidates fall into this description.  Paul is economically conservative instead of moderately liberal.  Huntsman and Johnson appear to be socially moderate or liberal and economically conservative.

The Democratic party is economically liberal and socially moderate.  They want the government to have more control of businesses and the economy and, while preaching individual liberty, are quite fine to throw it away when the President needs to fight the omnipresent terrorist threat.

But more of that in another blog post.  The point of this is that Ron Paul is not a libertarian.  He has introduced legislation forcing his conservative morals on everyone.  He is a traditional Republican.  The Republican party has been moving further into Authoritarian.  The Democratic party is straddling the line between Liberal and Authoritarian.