Rand Paul is a gift to historians. As a candidate he embodies some of the longest-lasting, most picturesque -- and most reactionary and dangerous -- elements of the American political tradition: contempt for government; veneration of personal property over all else; freedom defined as the absence of restraint, meaning the 'freedom' to exploit.
Like his father Ron, Rand Paul is schooled in the late-modern ideology of libertarianism (Ayn Rand, Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman). But learned discourses on "capitalism and freedom" hardly matter to their base, which wouldn't know Hayek from a hole in the wall. When they rouse audiences, they appeal to currents in American life that predate Friedman's "free markets" utopia.
The real ancestors of the Pauls, Sarah Palin, and the rest of the Tea Partiers are the antebellum Jacksonian Democrats, who drew on the "Old Republican" tradition of Southern slaveholders. Deeply concerned about threats to their way of life, they accused national government supporters of "monarchical" tendencies, and authored the doctrine of states' rights and nullification of federal authority. Sound familiar?
Like today's Tea Party, Jacksonians considered themselves the inheritors of the American Revolution. Above all, they venerated private property of two types. First was the land they had extorted at gunpoint, following massacres, from the Southern Indians, who mistakenly thought federal treaties protected them. The second form of property was the slave labor that turned the forests of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana into the "Cotton Kingdom" after Jackson's armies expelled the Indians. Led by Mississippi Senator Jefferson Davis, the men who rose to power on the wealth slaves created broke up the Union rather than accepting Lincoln's victory.
Jacksonians like Davis believed in their rights, as white men, over everyone else--their women, children and slaves, the Indians, the land itself. They asserted that this was America's identity: conquering nature, accumulating wealth and ruling over others. They wanted only enough government, under their control, to protect them in these endeavors. Anything else they viewed as treason. To libertarians and Jacksonians alike, freedom belongs to those who can take it, and practicing freedom means having the liberty to make money any way you can.
No wonder Rand Paul called Obama's criticism of BP and the Massey Coal Company "un-American" and told Rachel Maddow that government had no business deciding whom restaurant owners must serve. The sanctity of "private property," no matter how you got it or the societal effects of how you use it, is the dogma animating this kind of "constitutional conservative."
I'd really like to know Paul's views on the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments -- respectively, the abolishment of slavery in 1865, the creation of government-enforced equal citizenship in 1868 and requiring the states to let all black men vote in 1870. My gut tells me that's not the "Constitution" he has in mind!
The Jacksonian attitude toward the rule of law also prefigures today's Tea Partiers. As Daniel Walker Howe points out in his 2007 Pulitzer Prize-winner What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848, Jackson "did not manifest a general respect for the authority of the law when it got in the way of the policies he chose to pursue." A notorious duelist, Jackson regularly executed without trial his own soldiers and Indians, and he used his 1835 State of the Union address to endorse mob violence against abolitionists while gangs burned black churches in New York and Philadelphia.
It is a short move from that brand of vicious demagoguery to Palin's telling white rural audiences in 2008 that only they were the "real Americans" and instructing her followers after health care reform passed: "don't retreat, just reload." The Pauls' antigovernment rhetoric about the income tax and the Federal Reserve stokes the Patriot movement, which denies the authority of the federal government entirely. The benighted "Patriot" trucker Jerry Kane and his son, who both died in a shootout with police May 22, are only the most recent casualties in the long history of Jacksonianism.
"States' rights," a glorification of the private interest over the public good, and race hatred are certainly, historically speaking, American, but there's nothing "constitutional" or "conservative" about them. So, I would like to thank Rand Paul for bringing history so vividly to contemporary light, if only I didn't think these elements of our history were far better left in the past.
Nice Strawman and Ad Hominem there, Mr. Goss. As a fellow historian, I can say without a doubt I am ashamed that you and I have the same collegiate training background. Freedom to exploit, what a CROCK!
'The sanctity of "private property," no matter how you got it or the societal effects of how you use it, is the dogma animating this kind of "constitutional conservative."'
UTTER CRAP! Fraud is NOT part of Capitalism and is, in fact, a facet of Corporatism!
To see a Libertarian society, all you need to do is go to the robber baron era of the late 19th century, where big corporations used their wealth and power to own a limited government and paid out poverty wages.
"America in 1880. I can't really imagine anyone waxing nostalgic for it, nor can I see how anyone of sound mind could characterize it as an epoch of freedom in bloom unless I was a railroad or steel magnate or a Wall Street titan. All of these 21st century Galts must imagine that they would be sitting at J.P. Morgan's right hand or buying steel companies along side Andrew Carnegie. Clearly none of them picture themselves in the lives that even most white men were living at the time, working with their hands and their backs under the control of either corporate power or at the mercy of markets and monetary policy designed to their detriment.
Business owners were free to exploit their workers and monied interests were given pride of place in the political order. This is really what libertarians value, the freedom for the so-called "productive" members of society to be able to take that which they want without any countervailing institutions to get in their way.
http://www.cogitamusblog.com/2010/04/the-libertarian-pathology.html
http://www.lp.org/platform
Baloney. That's Corporatism, which is something both Rand and Ron rail against constantly. And, btw, the late 19th century was NOT a time of limited government as that is when the theoretical underpinnings of what became Fascism started in this country. People used the government to maul anybody that got into their paths. When do you think the Temperance Leagues got started?
Its also rather evident that you did NOT read the Libertarian platform. Look for the words Force and Fraud and you'll understand.
It's nice when you're underestimated by your competition!
According to a CNN/Opinion Research poll, 56% of the American people think that the “federal government has become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens”; and this includes 37% of the Democrats. This is right in line with Ron Paul.
According to an MSNBC poll 78% of the public don't trust the federal government. Again in line with the Tea Party.
80 percent of the public wanted an audit of the federal reserve as did the Tea Party. The Obama administration and establishment senators railroaded this at the last second. The Wall Street Journal poll that day had 86 percent in favor of a full audit.
Also the majority of the public thinks Afghanistan is a lost cause and have no idea what the objective is. Again in line with Ron Paul. Here is a great quote from Thomas Jefferson which is in line with the Tea Party.
"The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive." Thomas Jefferson
Glenn Beck recently publicized Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom" on his show, making it wildly popular on Amazon. The Paul's are populist Christian state's rights Republicans, and their views are extremely popular and here to stay.
You have nailed the issue on the head - and your analysis of the parallels between the modern 'Tea Party' and the bifurcated political philosophy that dominated antebellum America is spot-on!
Thanks for a fascinating essay!
Hipocritically, these Tea Party/ Libertarian favorites know this doesn't bode well with the general populace, and they back-track as soon as an unfavorable statement is uttered. Ala Paul.... and now Sharron Angle out of Nevada. Once these people are out of the shell of their immediate constituents and their true colors are exposed for all, many of the *unwashed, unreal americans* are repulsed by it's undertones.
Your last line, Mr. Gosse..... it was pure gold.
Jackson also tended to do whatever the heck he wanted but he was not a teabagger-always thought he was an LBJ before we had LBJ.
Very good article. We can thank the Rands, Palins, tea partiers for reminding us of why we have moved on to a better place. But bringing up these ugly segments of our US history reminds us of why these elements are in the past and should stay in the past. Too many folks don't know US history and the 'know betters' play on and use these unsuspecting puppets to gain power and control.
The immigration process is an example of how many other ethnic groups came to these shores and were demonized by those already here. None of this history gets included in the debates. Very soon cooler heads will prevail and immigration reform will take place.
Today's teabaggers don't have the excuse of having lived and grown up in the wilderness and under a primitive economy. They should have the benefit of history to guide them--yet they ignore it. They aren't following in Jackson's footsteps, they are just willfully ignorant.