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Entry: Jonah Goldberg Takes on Ron Paul Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/jonah_goldberg_takes_on_ron_paul#11690 Post contents: Jonah Goldberg, like David Brooks uses the kind of ad jingle sophistry that is the journalistic equivalent of Vicks Vapo- Rub. It appears to work only because it smells so strongly. Lather it on, breathe deeply....all better. Right. The neo-conservatives present the knowledgeable student of politics and history with a kind of counterintuitive problem because the political force they most closely resemble is a Barely Constitutional Monarchy. Their king is the Bureaucracy....a Bureaucracy that tilts toward windmills like all dutiful utopias. They should really be called neo-con monarchists. The Bureaucracy is Dead, Long Live the Bureaucracy (and offshore accounts in the fine print). What it all really boils down to is a surrender to the notion that we need large institutions and large governments........a strong cumulative force in order to deal satisfactorily with a complex world. As a result, we are confronted in this next election with a choice between Big Government Democrats and Big Government Republicans. Any use of the term liberal or conservative is a complete waste of time and a satisfactory diversion for the schemers that run the bold-faced charade that is our current elections. This is why the Ron Paul Candidacy has generated such interest this time around, from non-Stockholm Syndrome infected elements of both the left and the right. His philosophy is, above all else, anti-big. It hues strongly to the foundational philosophy of the Framers. They saw the excesses of big government and the large smoothly operating machinery of an unaccountable bureaucracy first hand and in response, created a purposefully Rube Goldbergian contraption that lay athwart the natural progressions of power that affect any government, liberal or conservative. If anything, their design for government was essentially counterintuitive for a species hardwired for territorialism and power. It was and shall always be a lovely conceit...something that required a restrained discernment and vigilant skepticism to properly pull off. The fact that we did make a great go of it for so long really is exceptional and our relapse into failed paradigms so quickly is equally exceptional. Brainless perhaps but we aint tentative. We stopped exhibiting discernment when we decided we were exceptional and should just embrace exceptionalism rather than skepticism. When this happened, our journalism went along for the ride and produced people like Jonah Goldberg in droves, war train camp followers who are eager to please the Beast of Bigness because there is a good payday for pedestrian effort. The National Review embraced this Beast of Bigness because it rightly feared another form of arid Institutional bigness called Communism. But, absent the self-defeating Communists, it had nothing else to fight besides history and so it embraced the Neo Cons whose great Crusade was the Re-Writing of History in Their Image. The Terrorism which is a reaction to the Bigness that afflicts us provided a perfect venue for them to grow and consolidate their crusade. This centralized and bloodthirsty bureaucracy that Mr. Buckley felt safe in supporting against the Communists is now being turned against our own institutions and the National Review remains among it's biggest supporter. Albert J. Nock would be a tad surprised that his purported lunch table conversations with the young William went so thoroughly ignored. Like Communism, this behemoth of Globalism and Institutional Giganticism is self defeating. Unfortunately, like communism, it is pernicious, consumptive and enormously destructive . It will be beaten by letting it be itself and the great sadness of it is that individualism, the core value of these United States is now, like labor, becoming a pejorative.We are now a nation of joiners, breathless spectators who get the most petulant when we are told we cannot be like our favorite object of consumerist fascination. Marx was not right so much as he was just indiscriminate. Instead of decrying capitalism entirely, he should have simply went to war against bigness of any type.Capitalism is not the problem , it's bigness that is......Elephantitis of Commerce and Government. Capitalism, at the individual level is a great avenue for peace and prosperity. If you doubt this, take a stroll down Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. It aint a shining city on a hill, it's a brawling borough hard at work. It don't so much love it's fellow man as want to do business with em. The trans-lingual language of transaction...the peaceful pursuit of commerce between individuals is what is at stake today. If we all thought intelligently and acted intelligently at home, the globe wouldn't require much from us beyond enjoying it. It is, in the end, a kind of pathology of the drunk and it is only when a drunk recalls his individualism that he decides to rescue himself from an auto-ass whoopin. Here's to another Declaration of Independence and that aint just Vicks Vapo-Rub. Sent at: 2008 07 25