Ron Paul: Psychobiographized by the New York Times and Lives to Tell the Tale

The New York Times today introduces America to the mysterious Ron Paul, candidate for president.

It's a pretty positive piece, actually, certainly giving the reader sufficient reason to admire the man's character and steadfastness if not explaining the whys and whats of his ideas with much depth.

It also buries the lead a bit, I think, in stressing Paul's hard-working upbringing from parents of German descent with family tales of hyperinflation as the cause of his ideas first. That's explains too much, I think, as plenty of Americans were born in the Depression to parents with Old World memories and worked hard and ended up New Dealers.

Rather, I think, like most of his libertarian brethren, one should look a little more to those books Ron Paul read–Pasternak, Rand, Hayek, Mises–to explain Paul more precisely. And the story does get to them as well.

The New York Times's Paul comes across as a decent man–hard working all his life, treating destitute patients for free, married to his one and only youthful sweetheart for over 50 years, no angry voices from family or associates to be seen. Of course, they paint him as a good man with peculiar, though well-thought-out and consistent, beliefs, and the sort of guy who is going to let you know about them, whether you care or not.

It may or may not matter to anyone anymore whether Ron Paul is or isn't a card-carrying member of the John Birch Society, a matter the Times always finds fascinating, fighting old ideological wars being a great pleasure apparently for their readers (regardless, Paul has been on the masthead of the JBS's magazine, spoken at their gatherings, and praised their members). I suspect it might have been more useful to readers considering Ron Paul in the context of running for president in 2012, not 1964, to discuss his prescience on the dangers of our Middle Eastern wars and Federal Reserve policies, neither of which get specific significant play in the story.

All told, though, being psychobiographized by the Times is a hazardous situation, and Dr. Paul came through it mostly unscathed.

For my own book-length take on the whats, whys, and hows of Ron Paul, see my forthcoming book Ron Paul's Revolution.