by
Justin Raimondo

Recently by Justin Raimondo: Who
Killed Yasser Arafat?

The anti-interventionist
movement, if we can refer to such an amorphous creature, is at a
crossroads at the start of this election season. On the left, the
remnants of the antiwar movement have been dispersed and absorbed
into the Democratic party, where they have become foot soldiers
for Obama – a President who has taken
up the foreign policy of his immediate predecessor and injected
it with some pretty strong
steroids.
Left-wing antiwar activism has almost
disappeared entirely, except for the marginal protests of a
few Marxist-Leninist grouplets. Indeed, some
on the left are even jumping on the interventionist bandwagon,claiming
the Western-backed Syrian rebels are really Marxist “revolutionaries,”
and not Osama bin Laden-wannabees.

On the right,
the only significant anti-interventionist mass movement in decades,
the Ron Paul campaign, has been bushwhacked by the Romneyites, who
have taken harsh
administrative
measures
against Paul’s supporters and outright
stolen a good number of their delegates to the Republican national
convention, ensuring that the Paulians will be kept in a well-guarded
corral in Tampa.

Ron Paul’s
campaign has been a lodestar for anti-interventionists of the left
as well as those on the right: it has inspired us, heartened us,
and given us that most essential fuel – hope. Now it is giving
us a lesson in how the political system in our “democratic” country
really works.

The two-party
system is playing the role it was designed for: to keep the national
discourse within “acceptable” bounds, and make sure nothing too
“radical” is presented to the American public for their consideration.
Aside from domestic issues, what this means is that our foreign
policy of perpetual war is not up for debate: Romney’s straining
to define some significant difference between himself and the administration
on, say, Afghanistan, or Syria, underscores this filtering process
at work.

By privileging
two state-sanctioned “parties,” the Democrats and the Republicans,
with automatic ballot status and government
subsidies, the political Establishment has rigged the game,
and nothing proves this better than the experience of the Ron Paul
campaign in the GOP this past primary season. The Paulians played
by the rules: they organized at the grassroots level and got their
people to the various local and state conventions, where the real
delegate selection process took place. Highly organized, and dedicated
to their candidate and their cause, the Paulians showed up in record
numbers – and the Republican party bosses freaked out.

In Louisiana
they called the cops when they realized they had been outmaneuvered,
and they did the same elsewhere. They shut down conventions and
party caucuses rather than see delegates pledged to Paul take the
prize. In Maine, where Paul won fair and square, their delegates
are being
challenged – a challenge almost certain to be upheld by
the Republican National Committee and the credentials committee
in Tampa.

If the game
is rigged, what is an opponent of the American empire to do? Abstain
from electoral politics?

No. Intervening
in major party politics is a valid strategy, one that can be utilized
to great advantage – provided it doesn’t become an end in itself.
While some Paulian operatives are hailing the primary importance
of achieving “mainstream
success,” this oily phrase requires definition. What does it
mean to succeed in the “mainstream,” as opposed to simply succeeding?
I fear it means doing what Sen. Rand Paul has done: endorsing Romney
and pledging to campaign for him and his thoroughly authoritarian
and war-minded party.

Libertarian
and conservative anti-interventionists who take this road will find
themselves marginalized – not because their ideas are too “extreme,”
but because they will have become cogs in a machine that is antithetical
to their goals. We are told by some of Paul’s most prominent
supporters – not Ron himself, however – that the Paulian
movement needs to integrate itself into the GOP for an indefinite
period. While they never flat out say it the clear implication is
that this is to be a permanent “strategy”: we must liquidate the
“liberty movement” (they’ve stopped calling it “libertarian”: sounds
too radical) into the Republican party, and if only we’ll turn ourselves
into water boys for Romney and his local clones we’ll have “proved”
ourselves such loyal servants of Power that we’ll “win” in the end.

This is being
marketed as “practical politics,” while anyone who raises an objection
is smeared
as a “radical anarchist.” The irony is that this kind of ostensibly
“pragmatic” strategy is naïve to the point of being infantile: the
proof is in the treatment the Paulians have received to date by
the party leadership. They aren’t going to let the Paulians win,
no matter how closely they follow the rules: when the old rules
don’t work, they’ll revoke them and make new ones. That’s
what’s happening in Maine and Massachusetts and Louisiana right
now, as Paul delegates duly and legally elected are kicked out and
Romney drones put in their place.

This doesn’t
mean Paul’s supporters need to retreat and leave the GOP: what it
means is that they have to fight – and not capitulate. It means
making a scandal of the Romney Machine’s vote-stealing shenanigans
and showing them up for the shameless hypocrites they are: after
all, this is a party that constantly screams about “voter
fraud” and is engaged in a nationwide campaign to keep people
from voting “illegally,” and yet their own leaders have engaged
in a systematic campaign of vote-stealing and outright vote fraud
throughout this entire primary season.

Anti-interventionists
in the GOP will never achieve “mainstream success” by kowtowing
to the Establishment and dutifully endorsing their warmongering
robot of a presidential candidate. Instead, they will transform
a generation of hardworking libertarian activists and staunch anti-interventionists
into platoons of yes-men (and yes-women) who will take any insult,
any betrayal, because “in the long run” they expect to win. As they
climb slowly up the political ladder, and seek offices and support
within the Republican party, the “pragmatic” strategy is to downplay
the most controversial aspect of the Paulian ideology, opposition
to the ever-expanding American Empire. After years of arguing, “Oh,
we can’t talk about that, it’ll get Mitch McConnell mad,” they’ll
wake up one day, look in the mirror, and discover they’ve become
what they started out to oppose.

When the “movement”
is everything, the ostensible goals of that movement are invariably
shelved – “in the long run” becomes never. When the
political careers of certain would-be leaders become the measure
of “mainstream success,” selling out becomes only a matter of time
– and, as we have seen, not very much time at that.

There is only
one possible tack for Ron Paul’s supporters in the Republican party
to take, and that is irreconcilable opposition to Romney, and to
the neocon-dominated party leadership. This doesn’t mean dropping
out of the party: it means biding their time.

Read
the rest of the article

August
2, 2012

Justin
Raimondo [send him mail]
is editorial director of Antiwar.com
and is the author of An
Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard and Reclaiming
the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement.

Copyright
© 2012 Antiwar.com

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