Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) was recently selected as on of Time Magazine’s 100 most Influential People. There was a brief blurb written about him by fellow Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell. Paul also came up on a page with various “tools” used by a few of the Time 100, which included Rand Paul’s scalpel. Before becoming a U.S. Senator, Paul was an ophthalmologist and frequently performed eye surgeries, including removing cataracts, and he noted the satisfaction in restoring a patient’s sight. But he also noted that being a doctor taught him the value of evaluating problems and symptoms objectively, and said that he tried to be as objective in his approach to politics. He even quoted Groucho Marx.
“In medicine we try to diagnose a problem and then look for a solution. There’s a Groucho Marx comment that politics is sometimes the opposite–politicians misdiagnose problems and apply the wrong solutions. But being an eye surgeon reminds me to take a more analytical approach.”
More analytical? Like blindly following disproven theories?
I laughed, but not because of the Marx quote. Rand Paul is an adherent of what is known as the Austrian School of economics. The Austrian School is an extreme form of free market fundamentalism that believes that economic markets should be nearly totally unregulated. It is called the Austrian School because the early developers were Austrian economists, including two named Fredrick Hayek and Ludwig von Mises. Many conservative politicians are enamored by the Austrian School, but curiously enough very few real economists, even deeply conservative economists, follow the Austrian School. This is probably because it has never worked in the real world, and most real economists know this. If you look at the world you can see that there are nations with highly unregulated economies. Those nations are often grouped as Third World nations. There is obviously too much regulation or government control, as every former communist country realized and as many European countries also realized before scaling back. But those countries that let the wealthy avoid taxes and let businesses avoid economic, environmental, and work place safety regulations, are not thriving. So the Austrian School of economics is pure theory.
Rand Paul’s views on foreign policy are what some have called neo-isolationist. His father (Congressman Ron Paul, R-TX) was a total isolationist, but Rand is much more nuanced. But his foreign policy views trouble most main-stream politicians, including many Republican and Conservative politicians. They rightfully note that this nation tried to disengage from international affairs after the First World War, with disastrous results. So Paul’s foreign policy views are based not on a rational analysis of the real world, and its myriad problems, but on a petty and truculent disdain for the rest of the world. It is a view based on a fantasy world, and not a rational analysis of the real world.
Paul’s views of history are also based more on a fantasy version of history than real history. Not long ago Senator Paul went to Howard University and lectured the students on why they should be Republicans. The main reason was that Lincoln (the first Republican President) freed the slaves and that many of the early advocates of the Civil Rights movement were Republicans, particularly from the northeast. He also noted that it was largely Democrats who opposed abolition, back in the middle of the 19th Century, and Southern Democrats who opposed the Civil Rights movement in the middle of the 20th Century. All of this is absolutely true, but Paul seemed to have forgotten Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy,” which was designed to turn southern Democrats into Republicans based on racial resentment. Paul didn’t know this but his audience at Howard, one of the jewels in the crown of historically black colleges, knew modern history very well. They knew very well that Republicans used to be for civil rights, but the modern Republican Party, since Nixon, has been home to racists, and has aggressively pushed to end programs that help minorities including blacks participate in society, including attempts to scale back the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and to restrict black voting. So Paul’s views on history are also not based on a rational analysis of fact, but on a rigid adherence to theory.
It was interesting that he quoted Groucho Marx, because his statement was comical.
