Atlas Shrugged, Sort Of

God bless the Republican voters of the great State of Kentucky. They threw off the oppressive yoke of the national Republican establishment and chose, dare I say, a maverick to oppose the Godless Democrats in the state’s Senatorial contest in November. They selected, by a significant margin, a 47 year-old ophthalmologist from Bowling Green, Rand Paul. If the name sounds vaguely familiar, his father, Ron Paul, was a recent candidate for President of the United States. Mr. Rand Paul has gained as of late some notoriety and much press attention by making certain statements about his positions on various national policy issues, including the President’s attitude towards British Petroleum in light of the current environmental situation in the Gulf of Mexico, and the wisdom or appropriateness of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Some people suspect Mr. Paul’s positions could prove to be a bit extreme.

That this comes as any surprise to anyone is something of an irony, since Mr. Paul is on record with his thoughts on a number of issues which pretty clearly indicate his fundamental principles. Unlike many who seek elective office, I believe Mr. Paul actually is a principled man who truly believes what he says and is not just shape-shifting in order to get the job. While it is difficult, and perhaps unfair, to try and summarize the totality of a person’s beliefs in a few words, Mr. Paul is a certainly a fervent supporter of the free market and reduced government intervention is private life; unless you happen to want an abortion, want to marry someone of the same sex or want to conduct medical research on human embryos, of course, but I guess freedom must have its limits.

Mr. Paul believes that campaign finance reform is “censorship” and that the cure to the corrosive effects of money in the national electoral process is to reduce the power and influence of the Federal Government such that corporations will not find it beneficial to expend money to sway public opinion. Mr. Rand apparently believes that most government regulation, such as regulation of oil companies or doctors, is an infringement of individual rights and is counterproductive from a practical perspective, unless it regulates abortions, of course. Mr. Paul also believes that private businesses should be able to choose to whom they provide goods or services and that if you run, for example, a restaurant, and you don’t want to serve people of African descent, then more power to you. It’s a business decision and you will either profit by it or not.

Mr. Paul is one of those people, sometimes known as “Constitutionalists”, who think the United States Constitution is intended solely to define the operational parameters of the Federal Government, not to define the general climate of public affairs, and that pretty much all the wisdom of governance that is possible to be divined is already in there. They are sort of like Biblical literalists in that they believe that the Constitution was more or less formed whole and perfect by the divine pantheon of monolithic and nearly flawless Founding Fathers, not to mention it being completely transparent and universally understandable. These people tend to discount the possibility that societies evolve politically or morally or that economic freedom could be context sensitive or that the fundamental flaws in human nature will manifest themselves more prominently when not mitigated by the structure of civilization.

Rand Paul has indentified himself with the “Tea Party”, a rather amorphous group of malcontents who seem to have resentment of taxation and a fondness for caricatures of Barrack Obama as their unifying themes. They are basically mad as hell and aren’t going to take it anymore, but other than keeping the guns they already have, acquiring more, and opposing “socialism”, they don’t seem to have much of a platform. Like many of us, they know what they don’t like, but they don’t have a clear concept of what the “correct” situation would be. Rand Paul tells them that the problem is mostly too much government, unless you want an abortion (repetition for emphasis), and that if we just get the government out of the way the capitalist utopia will manifest itself and freedom will be preserved for a thousand generations.

The problem with all this is that life is ninety-percent maintenance. Weeds will choke the garden of liberty if they are not persistently removed. Monopolies will form and free competition will be eliminated. Corporations will gain power and will use their economic might to influence the government to their benefit. Wealth will accrue in the hands of the few and be held as matter of heredity, not individual effort and skill. The poor and the ignorant will be forced to fight the wars of political convenience and economic advantage while the wealthy sip Perrier and cluck about how dreadful it all is. Conversely, the poor and the ignorant will be manipulated from time to time by populist demagogues to rise up and overthrow their Capitalist oppressors and each revolution will go too far and damage the engines of economic progress and material security. The madness of the mob will supplant reason and tyranny will reign; just watch the History Channel if you doubt my representations.

In the considered opinion of this humble Wormhole Repairman, Rand Paul and people like him are just as intellectually flawed as Karl Marx and the thousand other social philosophers who have summed up the secrets to success in a few sentences. They don’t understand that social perfection is a dream and that principles are a guide to action, not an articulation of known facts. So let me sum up the secrets to success in a few sentences. Life is complex. Balance is the rule of nature. There are no perfect solutions for the shortcomings of the human race. Self-governance and true human liberty are recent experiments which defy the established pattern of human history and have not yet been even nearly perfected. The United States Constitution, while a work of near genius, is a human creation, not a supernatural occurrence. The intellectual and moral progress of humanity did not cease in the 18th Century. Individual freedom without social responsibility is a fantasy perpetuated by the same frauds who sell get rich quick schemes and colon cleanses on cable channels at 3:00 in the morning. Economic freedom is not a natural counter to selfishness, chaos by choice is not morally superior to equitably enforced order, the profit motive will not restore the environment of the Gulf Coast, and, most notably, in 50 years when good old-fashioned Kentucky white people are decidedly in the minority and can’t get served at the downtown lunch counter, people like Mr. Paul will probably think differently.

We hold these truths to be self evident; we do not hold them to be without some difficulty in practical implementation. We strive to form a “more” perfect union, not a perfect union, knowing that perfection is the province only of God and delusional human minds. We’re up on the tightrope, one side’s ice and one is fire, but it is not a circus game; it is all that we hope for ourselves and our children and the generations of humans to come. The extremists of left and right may tell us that jumping off on one side or the other is the solution to all our problems, but for me, ladies and gentlemen, the lunch counter will remain open to all and Mr. Paul can take his “freedom is the freedom to deny freedom” rhetoric and throw it on the scrapheap of history along with all that other deceptively comfortable nonsense that we continue to use to justify our listening to the selfish devils that never stop whispering.