For as longest time, it has been my Christian duty to be an iconoclast. It’s just how I have fun, and for a while, my iconoclasm knew no bounds when I was a Left Libertarian. But even possessing such a nuanced position, I became disaffected, turned off by Paultardation and Paulinian Messianism, as if there was One Chosen White Man from Texas to “restore liberty.” Really, who grants these superpowers in the first place?
So, a few months ago, I kissed libertarianism goodbye. I still believe in the free market, that Keynsian economics is stupid, Obamacare was plain idiocy, and non-interventionist foreign policy is right. In fact, I would say one of the things that first attracted me to Ron Paul was his foreign policy. The USA is rather arbitrary when it comes to choosing which nations’ affairs to intervene with, and like it or not, racial bias plays a role exactly where our troops land. Somalia? Kosovo? Anyone?
That being said, the Libertarian cases against things such as FEMA and public education started to turn me off, and I realized that I did not affirm those positions. The best way to ensure freedom from tyranny is to have an educated electorate, an education accessible to everyone. Many of the America’s Founders believed.
Recently, followers on Twitter and Facebook friends have expressed disappointment in my posting and re-tweeting Ron Paul’s Newletters, a Twitter feed that quotes Ron Paul’s newsletters from the 80s and 90s, that have been scanned. Check the link for details. Imagine for a second. I am up for a job at a church, and I may not be the ideal candidate, and I have said a lot of crazy things on Political Jesus, Twitter, and Facebook, and especially Twitter. What if I said, hey, yah, that really was not me. That was all Joel. He blogged for me, and I let him under my name. Should I be held responsible? I think your answer should be yes. Just as certain celebrity politicians who pay people to write books for them are responsible for what is written, so should Ron Paul be held responsible for what he allowed and permitted Lew Rockwell to write in his name.
This is exactly RESTORING WISDOM should be about. “A good name is better than fine perfume, and the day of death better than the day of birth.” (Ecclessiastes 7:1) “A good name is more desirable than great riches; to be esteemed is better than silver or gold.” (Proverbs 22:1) The mistake that Ron Paul made as a Christian was that he chose power (appealing to the basest desires and emotions of his political base) over having a good name, a reputation, when Scripture informs us that it should be the reverse. The apostle Paul wrote to his son in the faith Timothy that a Christian leader should have a good reputation with outsiders (1 Timothy 3:7), operating in Wisdom. Fact is, Ron Paul claimed to not have written these newsletters as late as 2001, putting his story into question.
For More, see Game Over: Scans of over 50 Ron Paul Newsletters.
