Everyone seems to be talking about the remarkable political phenomenon that Congressman Ron Paul’s run for the presidency has become. Rep. Paul’s campaign for the White House took off when the Texas Republican, who previously ran as the Libertarian Party’s candidate, strayed outside party orthodoxy on Iraq during a nationally televised debate between GOP presidential candidates in South Carolina last May.

Stunning the Republican establishment, Rep. Paul suggested that U.S. policy in the Middle East might have something to do with why Americans find themselves targets of Al Qaeda terrorist attacks in the first place.

Republican front-runner Rudy Giuliani, “as someone who has lived through the attacks of 9/11,” immediately denounced the congressman’s heterodoxy as something he’d never heard before and demanded Rep. Paul retract his statement (Paul did not).

Giuliani drew loud applause from the audience of stalwart South Carolina Republicans at the debate when he called Ron Paul’s suggestion “absurd.” Out in voterland, however, the applause was for Ron Paul’s straight talk: Finally!

A lot of voters think that the real absurdity is the explanation offered by the nation’s parroting classes for why we were attacked on 9/11: because the attackers hate us/hate our freedom. After seven wasted years of the dishonest and destructive presidency of George W. Bush, an abundant source of absurdities, the American electorate is thirtsy for simple truths plainly spoken.

When Hacks Attack

With increasing support, of course, come increasing attacks, and Rep. Paul is getting his dose—primarily from the far right. A major worry seems to be that Rep. Paul’s candidacy may “distort” the Republican nominating process—a process that rewards the candidate who can raise the most corporate cash the fastest.

Those Republicans remaining who still place country before party and issues before personalities can only hope.

But, far-right GOP partisans, who don’t blink an eye at multinational media conglomerate Viacom throwing bundles of contributions at mainstream John McCain, are distraught over their discovery that some of Ron Paul’s campaign contributions come from zip codes in San Francisco and Chicago!

Throwing in slurs like “Nancy Pelosi,” “quasi-anti-semite,” and the old standby, “racist,” for good measure, the attackers advise partisans to beware a Republican making inroads in Democratic strongholds: such a Republican couldn’t really be a Republican.

Most of the savaging of Congressman Paul, however, targets his libertarianism: Ron Paul is a libertarian; libertarians are fringe whackos; the idea of a President Paul is therefore scary.

Ron Paul’s libertarianism shouldn’t scare anyone

Like any political movement or cause, libertarianism contains a realist strain and a radical strain. Those who understand the difference will understand that there is nothing scary about realist libertarianism. They will also recognize Ron Paul as a realist.

Political radicals of any stripe are to be avoided.

Radicals recognize the merits of a given movement’s arguments, adopt them permanently as immutable principles, and then spend the rest of their lives attempting to bludgeon their understanding of the world—and sometimes the world itself—into conformity.

Political realists, on the other hand, recognize the merits of a given movement’s arguments, adopt them conditionally as reasonable insights, and then spend the rest of their lives trying to act in the world as insightfully as possible.

Realists are thus open to learning, to thinking in new ways, to changing their opinions; radicals are much less so, if at all.

Realist thinkers mature and deepen as they absorb new insights. Radical thinkers, rooted to their fixed principles, mostly limit themselves to standing on the sidelines shouting “sell-out” at the realists.

Realists make good leaders. Radicals make good tyrants.

Among libertarians, the realists are distinguished from the radicals by the latter’s insistence on the need to eliminate all government. While beyond the scope of this post, it isn’t hard to show that radical libertarianism, though fun as a thought experiment, is neither viable nor desirable as a political system.

Representative Ron Paul does not deny the need for government. Instead, for the most part, he seems to have adopted many of the compelling aspects of libertarianism while remaining open to new ways of thinking about important issues.

Bush the radical

On immigration and free trade—two issues sure to play increasing roles in US elections in proportion to their increasing impact on American society—the radical libertarian position is held, in fact, not by Ron Paul, but by George W. Bush.

President Bush has never wavered from his oft-stated view that as long as there are workers anywhere in the world willing to work in the United States, and US employers willing to hire them, US immigration law should not interfere.

On trade, the Bush administration’s anti-borders crusade is just as extreme, as demonstrated by the steady flow of open-throttle free trade agreements the White House continues to send through a supine Congress.

“There shall be open borders” is the Holy Grail of extremist libertarians. In libertarian terms, the administration’s positions on immigration and trade couldn’t be any wilder-eyed. Unable to comprehend the difference, apparently, between the Kansas/Nebraska border and the US/Mexico border, the Bush administration has pursued policies that seem designed to dismantle national borders altogether.

As icing on the cake, prattle for prattle, there isn’t a radical libertarian alive who can match George W. Bush on the subject of “freedom.”

Rep. Paul has consistently opposed the administration’s agenda on both immigration and trade, as his ranking on this site—which tracks and ranks members of congress on precisely those two issues—shows. Of all the candidates running for president, in fact, Ron Paul scores best on trade and immigration.�

In any case, I’d take a realist anything over a radical anything else any day of the week. The presidency of George W. Bush provides a good example why. In practice a radical libertarian globalist, his presidency has turned out to be scary, indeed.

Rep. Paul’s libertarianism, on the other hand, is manifestly realist. It isn’t scary at all. In fact, since many of the insights of libertarianism as a political philosophy are compelling, his libertarianism is more than just “not scary.” It’s attractive.

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� As for the candidates not currently serving in the Congress, and, therefore, not ranked by this site, they have all, in the past, supported policies that would put them well below Rep. Paul).

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