Most people who paid any attention to the 2008 Republican primary race remember Ron Paul. He was, and is, against the free reign of the Federal Reserve in the American economy. He decries the brute force "diplomacy" that the United States has exhibited for decades. He is against what has been called the war on drugs. Ron Paul is often seen as the bastion of true conservatism against the Empire of the United States and its debt-ridden, over-reaching ways.
Ron Paul is not a part of the faux divide that permeates modern American politics. He is one figure of the paradigm shift that has yet to be fully realized--the shift from the dominant function of dysfunction that defines politics today. That dysfunction distracts policymakers from not only finding real solutions to America's most dreadful ailments, such as extreme budgetary shortfalls, but from the ability to even discern between real problems and the contrived misnomers. Those distractions, such as the "deficit hawks'" targeting of the most trivial aspects of the federal budget, often detract from real progress in addressing the nation's woes. The proposed defunding of public radio and television, namely the Corporation for Public Broadcast, and Planned Parenthood are so obviously motivated by a desire crush what is seen by some as a leftist agenda.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) is the not-for-profit entity that distributes funds directly to your local public radio and television stations. Those stations, in turn, produce original content as well as purchase the rights to air certain programming. There is nothing insidious or deceptive about this process but there are those who feel that informing the public without divisiveness and for-profit interest is not a worthy cause. The 2011 federal appropriation to CPB was $430 million.
Planned Parenthood is another target of those self-proclaimed, but outwardly lacking, conservatives who would rather mislead the public to believe that the organization is an abortion factory than admit that they actually help women and families. Only about 3% of Planned Parenthood's actual services are abortions. The rest consist of mammograms, vaccinations, screenings for cervical cancer and distribution of free contraceptives. The approximately $75 million for the funding of Planned Parenthood is but only a fraction of Title X, the greater allocation to family planning which is about $317 million annually. One would think, in a nation facing such tight budgetary constraints, that taking the funding from organizations that offer free contraception would be counter-productive.
These social matters are inconsequential when it comes to America's greater fiscal outlook. While those honest conservatives like Ron Paul might not agree with the funding of many institutions such as CPB and Planned Parenthood, he is also not afraid to question the true nature of America's debt.
The annual cost of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars are about $200 billion annually, which is only a small part of the approximate $1.4 trillion that is spent on defense each year. While America undoubtedly needs to have an active military, its practice of occupying foreign nations is not only costly in terms of dollars and lives spent, but it also tends to incite further anger towards the US. In many ways, such military operations contribute more to anti-American sentiment than they could ever reduce in aspiring terrorism.
Yet another aspect of the budget that is not questioned by most of the so-called conservatives serving in Congress today, or in the recent past, is the funding for what has been called the war on drugs. A more apt description of federally-sanctioned prohibition goes something like this: a borderline unconstitutional, intrinsically inhumane, and downright draconian attack on the personal freedoms of not only US citizens, but the citizens of all countries. In 2011, the US will likely spend approximately $23.5 billion to enforce cruel and outdated federal drug control policies. That money will go to federal, state and local law enforcement agencies to catch, prosecute, convict and cage drug offenders. A significant portion of these drug cases turn out to be low-level cannabis offenses. This scenario, coupled with the fundamental question of whether federal agents should have a say in what American's consume, would seem like a natural place for conservative policymakers to promulgate ideas of personal freedom and fiscal constraint.
Alas, Ron Paul seems to be the only one with the guts to question such long-standing norms in American politics. Those who claim to be fiscally conservative yet back some of the most outrageously expensive, in dollars and opportunity cost, policies in history will eventually have to answer the voting population. Let's hope they look for sincerity instead of pandering to those more divisive social issues.
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