This op-ed by Republican Congressman (and former Libertarian Party presidential nominee) Ron Paul is as fine an example as I’ve ever seen of the libertarians looking at a problem, seeing some of the elements of it, and then fabulously failing to understand what’s really wrong. Ron Paul is right that we’ve seen a frightening erosion of real wealth in this country. That doesn’t come from the meagerly redistributive system of capitalism we have in this country. It comes from the kind of neo-liberal dogma that guys like him push that has shuttered our manufacturing capacity as multinational corporations search out a way to cut an extra dollar off of their man hour costs. It’s not our government’s relatively weak powers to redistribute wealth that deters men and women of character from going into government. It’s the ever increasing inequality of wealth in our society and fear of ending up on the losing side of the economy that pushes people of good character to do corrupt things. It’s a culture that tells people that financial success is not only its own reward, but proof of your character and worth as a human being that makes “fuck everyone else, I’m gonna get mine” into a virtual national raison d’etre. What we’re seeing are the inevitable consequences of a rabid sort of socioeconomic darwinism and virulent class warfare that our country has embraced for 25 years. It won’t end so long as we mistakenly equate money with speech and allow a corporate media oligopoly to filter what most americans see and hear.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 23rd, 2006 at 4:03 pm and is filed under economics, electoral politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.