While Ron Paul, Lew Rockwell, Tom Woods, Jeff Deist, and Brion McClanahan spoke at length on secession as a tactic in weakening the power of the state, what really worried the Washington Post — which reported on the event yesterday morning — was tedious, to say the least. “While Rand seeks donors, his father talks secession,” read the article’s subtitle. “…supporters of the two men are concerned that Ron Paul’s continued activism will weigh on his son,” the paper went on.
I have no doubt that we will once again be told that the 2016 election is “the most important election ever!” just as we are told with every election, but I’m not losing any sleep over whether or not Ron Paul is doing enough to help one of his relatives be more popular with mainstream Republican voters — the same people who sent George W. Bush to the White House twice, and wanted to make John “we should arm ISIS” McCain president of the United States in 2008.
On the other hand, deep into the article, there is some actual coverage of Saturday’s event:
…on Saturday, [Ron Paul] came to Houston to talk about secession.
The event was organized by the Ludwig von Mises Institute, an Alabama-based think tank named after an Austrian economist whose writings are highly respected by libertarians. Ron Paul is a member of its board.
“We’ve been conquered. We’ve been occupied by the state, and its phony veneer of democratic elections,” Deist, the day’s first speaker, said, contending that the federal government has taken on powers the Founding Fathers never envisioned. He continued: “Why not seek out ways to split apart, rationally and nonviolently? Why dismiss secession, the pragmatic alternative that’s staring us all in the face?”
Overall, the coverage is just the sort of weak tea you’d expect from WaPo. WaPo could have framed the article in light of numerous global secession efforts from Yemen, to Spain, to Scotland, and to Italy. But you’ll look in vain for mention of any of that in this article. The article could have framed secession in terms of very real demographic fault lines among populations in different parts of the country (what political scientists call cleavages). Are Americans all as “united” as the pundits seem to assume they are? But no. That would require knowledge of foreign affairs or at least a detailed breadth of knowledge about the American population outside DC. That would require a reporter to find new sources, some of whom might even be in foreign countries, or somewhere deep within flyover country. For WaPo, in contrast, it’s always best to break it down to the lowest-brow human-interest type of analysis possible — nicely packaged for the Post‘s parochial, House-of-Cards-watching, DC-centric audience — which is evident in the article’s title: “Daddy issues.”
12:12 pm on January 26, 2015
