The most important reason to vote for Ron Paul

Last week I was flying out to San Diego, and I sat next to a Navy officer who had served in Afghanistan. He struck up a conversation with me during the flight, and at some point we came around to the wars in the Middle East. I asked him, "Is it worth it for us to be in Afghanistan?" His answer, sadly, did not surprise me. It went something like this:

Honestly, there are probably more terrorists on American soil right now than there are in the countries where we're "fighting terrorism."

This would not be the first soldier I have heard question U.S. foreign policy.
Ever since I was old enough to be aware of politics, we have been sending troops to Afghanistan and Iraq. Have we achieved our objectives? What objectives? Are we the nation destined to build democracy around the world? And must we sacrifice a continual supply of troops in order to do it? Consider this video (you'll see it above on my blog) outlining some of our history with the Middle East, particularly with Iran. Ever since we began playing political chess with the Soviet Union some 60 years ago, we have invested ourselves in a never-ending cycle of violence from which even now we have no respite. Did not the Soviet Union collapse? Does not empire always tend to crumble? Why are we still fighting? Why did we ever choose to fight? Christianity has shaped a great part of our tradition in America. Yet while the Church has been mobilized by political elites to argue about things like prayer in schools, gay marriage, and abortion, She has been strangely silent on matters of foreign policy. Have we any right to complain that Christianity has been pushed out of the public sphere, when on the issue on which our religion is most clear, we have been most silent? There is no Christian justification, nor has there ever been, for military occupation during times of peace. There is no Christian justification, nor has there ever been, for unprovoked war against other nations. Have we become the empire seeking to bring order through conquest? Have we no king but Caesar? The conservative elite have determined that the only "realistic" thing to do, for the sake of our national security, is to continue fighting. The most basic Christian tenet that human beings were made for peace with one another has been swallowed up by nationalist pride, and words have been twisted so that aggression becomes "defense." Our bloody history is mostly unknown or ignored by the public. All of this would be at least somewhat tolerable (though only to a cynic) if it at least made some rational utilitarian sense. But alas, the truth is, our wars are fought on the same faulty economic grounds upon which our unsustainable welfare state is built. Destruction is not gain. War does not create prosperity. War is always sacrifice, and any society called to fight must be given rigorous justification for such a horrible sacrifice. To put it another way, as Ron Paul did in one of the debates, "It's trillions of dollars...!" Trillions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dead bodies, more hatred, more anger, more resentment. This is not only immoral, it is impractical. Our foreign policy is every bit as unsustainable as our misguided health care policies. The only difference is that the latter at least have some moral justification, at least if you believe supporting human life is better than killing it! This is the fundamental reason why we ought to elect Ron Paul. Very few other issue matters nearly so much, and on no other issue does the President of the United States have so much direct influence. He is the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces. There is no more important question that you can ask a presidential candidate than how he thinks we ought to conduct our foreign policy, and on this matter there is no one who can even approach a moral platform than Ron Paul. See this video outlining a policy of friendship and free trade. I did not come to this position easily. Like many people, I was initially swayed by whatever options seemed available at the time I first began to form political opinions. There seemed to me to be the idealist left versus the realist right, and for a time I chose to be a "realist." But I have struggled to make sense of our foreign policy in light of Christian principles, in light of the inherent dignity of human life and the value of liberty, and even in light of sound economic sense, and I simply cannot find anywhere in my body or soul even an ounce of remaining support for the current U.S. foreign policy of global interventionism. Barack Obama, once thought to be the hope for a peaceful American regime, has only furthered many of the same policies implemented by George W. Bush, and this has only deepened my disillusionment. We have become a nation which feeds on destruction, and unless we change our course, this will be our undoing. In this time of economic uncertainty, it is natural that the average voter would be consumed by economic concerns. Tragically, our wars only hurt our long-term economic progress (as if we could ever justify killing even if it did secure our prosperity!) but you will hear almost the opposite in the media. I could cite famous economic thinkers from Adam Smith to Frederic Bastiat to Milton Friedman to justify my position, but I would rather simply appeal to common sense: destruction is not prosperity, death is not prosperity, war is not prosperity. Prosperity can only come through peace; let us therefore pursue peace. For God's sake, and for the sake of everything that is sacred--life, liberty, peace--we need to stop America's destructive foreign policy while we can. Only if our nation has enough moral courage can we ever hope to enjoy the fruits of peace. We owe it to our troops. We owe it to our world. We even owe it to ourselves, and to future generations of Americans to come.

Mesmerizing

Mikayla Mackaness on peace, love, and...

...wait for it...

...Ron Paul, believe it or not.

This is one of a series of endorsements for Ron Paul, all meditating on the concept of peace. All of them are quite beautiful, I might add.

When you hear that Ron Paul's support runs deep, it might be easy to conjure up images of rabid individualists and free market fanatics. But the diversity among Ron Paul supporters as quite astonishing. Most encouraging to me is seeing supporters of peace join his camp.

How about it? Peace, love, and Ron Paul 2012.

The politics of peace

If I could sum up my objection to both the right and the left in American politics, it would be to say that both movements believe that progress is made fundamentally through conflict. Conservatives believe that progress is made through protecting "Western culture" or "American values" and by defeating the enemies of freedom; hence going to war and violently defending our borders are often necessary components of progress. For liberals, progress is made by winning the inherent conflict between the rich and the poor, or between the privileged class and the underprivileged class, or between the majority and the underrepresented minority. This also manifests itself occasionally in violence, as for instance when labor unions in the past have violently coerced workers to fall in line with their policies. But even if violence is not as welcome on the left as on the right, coercion is, whether in the form of taxation or bureaucratic regulations.

The fundamental reason I am a libertarian is because I believe that progress is not made primarily through conflict, but through peace. Competition has been overemphasized in expressing the value of free markets. Yes, competition protects the consumer in a free market, but the kind of competition we're talking about is not a zero sum game, because free exchange means mutual benefit, and mutual benefit means a net positive for society. Free exchange is not only the natural result of peace, but it also helps to create peace. People who benefit from one another are not likely to soon become enemies. Nor can friends do anything but freely exchange, since the very nature of friendship is to desire mutual benefit.

I believe in open borders, non-interventionist foreign policy, free trade with all nations, and minimal regulations on private affairs. In other words, I believe the purpose of government is to promote peace in all facets of life. The reason I believe this is that I think the goal of human civilization is a world in which humans don't look at one another with suspicion, and I think the first step toward this goal is to first drop our own suspicion of others.

The politics of conflict can never be satisfied; on the one hand there always seem to be more people threatening to undo our culture, and on the other hand there always seem to be more greedy people who prey on the weak. At some point, wisdom demands that we drop our weapons and seek peace with our enemies, even if this means losing what feels like the battle for justice.

Is it possible that Americans will ever give up the conflicts which have driven our political ideologies? On the answer to that question may rest the fate of civilization as we know it.

Power and pacifism

I listened to an old emergent podcast featuring Brian McLaren called "Power, in ways we don't understand." Overall I thought it was wonderful, and much of what McLaren is saying resonates with me.

Not that this is the subject of my post, but I was really excited about how he explained what the gospel really is. I don't have a transcript of the whole thing in front of me, so I'll have to paraphrase something he said.

The gospel today is primarily personal, with the emphasis on saving souls. Then there's a rather large footnote on how to have a better life here on Earth before you get to heaven. Then there's a bit smaller footnote on how to improve our communities, and then a tiny little footnote on how the gospel impacts the whole world.

McLaren proposes thinking about it the other way around--start with what the gospel means to the whole world, then think about what that means for our communities, and then about what it means for our individual lives.

Along the way he stumbles onto this global issue of war and peace. As McLaren looks up to Stanley Hauerwas on many things, he also finds himself attracted to Hauerwas' pacifism.

McLaren says he is a "pacifist sympathizer." He also says pacifists are "ahead of their time." I'm paraphrasing a bit, but he says something like we need a "peace race" rather than an arms race. This kind of attitude seems pretty typical among the emergent strain of Christainity.

I'm not sure what I think. We live in an interesting time in which to formulate opinions about war and peace. A lot of liberals have been crying out for the past eight years that we failed to learn the lessons of Vietnam, and we're repeating our same mistakes.

But let's be honest, the lesson a lot of conservatives learned from Vietnam is that pacifism seems to come wrapped in a package of absurd liberal philosophy that simply doesn't work in real life. Vietnam didn't teach America to be pacifists; it taught us that pacifists are weird.

I say this as a 23 year-old inhereting the conversation that was going on decades before I was alive, but this is what I hear through the maze of opinions.

Iraq isn't exactly my generation's Vietnam. There has been no draft (and no draft dodging). Both the Hawks and the Doves have expressed their opinions from the comfort of their own blogs. Hardly any opinions of the war, good or bad, are forged out of any sort of practical experience.

That's all relative, of course. There are many brave men and women who have fought in Iraq and Afghanistan. Perhaps their opinion contain something in them that the rest of our opinions don't. It's just hard to say. But we do have a volunteer military. I think the dynamics would be very different if everyone were called to serve.

Anyway, how do we as Christians think about war? I get disturbed often by people who are way too decided. Either the Bible clearly teaches that war can be justified--I mean, just look at all the slaughter that God commanded Joshua to carry out--or it clearly teaches pacifism.

The words of Jesus on this subject are minimal, and at best they are cryptic. He did say, "All who take the sword will perish by the sword," (Mt 26:52) but this does not immediately condemn soliders. After all, those who perish by the sword are often given great honor because of it.

My own opinion at this point is that I cannot accept either "just war theory" or pacifism. How can theory really justify anything to do with killing people? It's like the problem of evil--it doesn't have a truly good explanation because it isn't good.

I have already expressed on this blog my frustration with ethics that try to come up with hypotheticals and "solve" them. I think the desire to solve hypotheticals is culturally conditioned, and it's something I think we need to train our culture out of as much as possible.

The way I view ethics these days is this. We are like a pianist sitting down to play. The music is already there in the keys of the piano; they just have to be struck in the correct order, with the correct timing and dynamics.

But what shall I play? thinks the pianist. He has this notion of beauty deeply embedded in his heart, and he wants to make that become real. He ponders this for a moment, longing for some perfect melody to come to mind. At last he takes a deep breath, and starts to play.

Is there any perfect melody? Is there any piece of music or art that can ever fully express the idea of beauty that is embedded in all of our hearts? Perhaps not. But the fact that the pianist listened to that longing in his heart, and then started to play--that is what made him a musician.

We long to see heaven on earth. As a Christian, I believe we will see it. But the only way we can make ethical decisions is to both desire to see heaven unleashed and then to act. Theoretical concerns do not make an action ethical or not.

Who is the soldier to boast that he was perfectly justified in killing his opponents? And then again, who is the pacifist to judge a nation for defending itself? Why do we all see this big need to justify ourselves, as if anything in this dark, corrupt world could really be justified?

I think of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a pacifist who plotted to kill Hitler. There was a man who understood ethics. There was a man who longed for heaven in his heart, and then tried with all of his might to somehow bridge the unbridgeable gap between heaven and hell.

To all the soldiers out there, I applaud your bravery. And to all the pacifists out there, I applaud your idealism.

We all have our cross to bear.