One of the first things that are wrong is this: the deep and silent modern assumption that past things have become impossible. There is one metaphor of which the moderns are very fond; they are always saying, “You can’t put the clock back.” The simple and obvious answer is “You can.” A clock, being a piece of human construction, can be restored by the human finger to any figure or hour. In the same way society, being a piece of human construction, can be reconstructed upon any plan that has ever existed.
-G.K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World
Ron Paul and his supporters are frequently derided as clinging to the 19th century, as lovers of anachronisms and “disproven” ideas. They love the barbaric relic of gold, and want to take us back to the age of robber barons and child labor. No matter how Ron Paul’s enemies choose to mischaracterize his agenda, his platform does indeed take much inspiration from the past. My contention, however, is that looking to the past constitutes a strength, not a weakness. In fact, the past is now the only route to a decent future.
Every election promises the same things: new ideas, a new direction, leadership that looks to the future. But what is so very wrong with the old ideas, the old directions or leadership that consults the past? There has to be something useful about the past! Do all the ideas of our predecessors become obsolete every four years?
This need to “look to the future” with “new ideas” and “progressive” thought is not just infatuation with the new, and it isn’t just the “progressive” left that does this. The gubernatorial campaign of the incumbent Republican governor in Indiana, Mitch Daniels, uses this vocabulary in profusion. I am convinced this language represents a fear of the past. And why shouldn’t our politicians be afraid of the past? The great statesmen of previous generations tower over today’s petty politics. Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense and moved a continent. When a modern politician writes a book, it is a stack of mass market chum published to boost campaign visibility.
The familiar turn of phrase, standing on the shoulders of giants, does not apply to modern America. She has not only climbed down from those sturdy shoulders, but is so intimidated by the giants she runs the other way.
The future is a blank wall on which every man can write his own name as large as he likes; the past I find already covered with illegible scribbles, such as Plato, Isaiah, Shakespeare, Michael Angelo, Napoleon. I can make the future as narrow as myself; the past is obliged to be as broad and turbulent as humanity. And the upshot of this modern attitude is really this: that men invent new ideals because they dare not attempt old ideals. They look forward with enthusiasm, because they are afraid to look back.
-G.K. Chesterton, What’s Wrong with the World
If we avoid looking at the past, we are spared the task of living up to it. The blank slate of the future allows us to scribble our ambitions as if they were grand new ideas. It has not already been painted on by the great masters from the past.
This is what makes Ron Paul’s version of change wholly unique in the presidential field. He was brave enough to look to the past, and find the ideas that already did us well, even if America gave up on them. The gold standard was not disproven just because it was abandoned. In fact, it is this abandonment of hard money that has caused the present-day credit crisis! Laizzes-faire was not disproven just because government chose to intervene. Constitutionalism is not disproven just because the current government is too far out of its bounds. It is exactly because we gave up on these ideas that they are worth trying again. We’ve been trying “new” things for so long, a true change would be to try something old! And that is what Ron Paul’s campaign offered.
The term “conservative” at least suggests a respect for the past, which is why I find myself working in the Republican Party in order to affect some positive political change in this country. I believe a lot of other people have made the same decision, now that they have discovered Constitutionalism and the ideals that most consider “libertarian.” Hopefully there is room in this Party for more than one Ron Paul. I don’t see any new blood coming into the GOP from other sources, so there had better be, or Republicans are going to go share their fate with the Dodo, and for the same reasons.
When America observed strict Constitutionalism, exercised a more laizzes-faire policy than today, and stuck to a hard money standard, she enjoyed steady and sustainable economic growth that dwarfs even today’s booming Asia. For some reason, those ideas were given up on, because some people feared the inconveniences of too much freedom, and instead preferred the obstacles accompanying too little freedom. We have tried the welfare-warfare state for nearly a century. We have endlessly chased the new, and have not avoided what I can only describe as a brewing economic meltdown. In the present crisis, is it still too soon to look back and try the ideas that worked?
