The Fringe
I realize that Ron Paul's principled stand on certain issues (Iraq) gives him crossover appeal (the left). And while it's nice that he brings up these issues in the public forum of a primary debate, let's not confuse that with him being a sensible guy. He really isn't. Via TPM, get a load of this campaign letter (PDF) from the Paul camp:
I don't need to tell you that our American way of life is under attack. We see it all around us -- every day -- and it is up to us to save it.The world's elites are busy forming a North American Union. If they are successful, as they were in forming the European Union, the good 'ol USA will only be a memory. We can't let that happen.
The UN also wants to confiscate our firearms and impose a global tax. The UN elites want to control the world's oceans with the Law of the Sea Treaty. And they want to use our military to police the world.
Some have referred to this as "Unabomber-esque" but that seems to imply that Paul is some sort of lone wolf. I think the views he expresses here--the black helicopters-variety world government conspiracy--are actually pretty widespread in this country. Certainly a distinct minority, but very real nonetheless. And I'm not blowing this out of proportion; I'm not concerned about Paul or his acolytes gaining real power. I guess I'm just fascinated by the mindset. How, for example, does an entity like the UN "confiscate our firearms and impose a global tax" without either an executive or legislative body? The ability to enforce law requires these things as a minimum, to say nothing of the bureaucracy that supports it. And those things simply don't exist but in the imagination. And while at times it does seem that our military polices the world, the prerogative to do so rests with the US government, not the UN, which doesn't even have a governmental structure (the Security Council can't even take action without unanimous consent from the five permanent members, for instance).
Also important to recall is that this sort of paranoia about unaccountable elites taking our property (isn't that what this boils down to?) and sovereignty is actually well established in the history of the American war for independence. The pamphlets which circulated in the pre-revolutionary period are rife with these sort of references. Not world government, per se, but the British Crown imposing its will over Englishmen in the colonies who felt their traditional rights earned in England during the Glorious Revolution (and hence transplanted to America) were being squashed one by one by conspiring Elites in London. And despite the lofty idealism of the Declaration of independence, the elegance of the Constitution, and the philosophical rigor of the Federalist Papers, this tradition of paranoia was very much born in America's revolutionary period and carries on to this day in the form of suspicion about world government instead of the British Crown.
I don't see this tradition going away. Recently I read about a conspiracy theory that placed the Denver international airport at the center of an effort to cleanse the world of its people to make way for a paradise reserved for the elites. It was fascinating reading. I had no idea such a cottage industry had arisen around such a preposterous idea. But there you have it. They might be a fringe, but they are certainly a fixture in the American political landscape.