Thursday, 1 November 2007

Fellow travellers

David Weigel at Hit and Run isn’t quite sure why Ron Paul attracts a lot of young supporters. Perhaps there’s a giant red flag here:

Jacob Bofferding, a student at Iowa State University, said he decided to work for Paul after seeing him on a televised debate.

“For Ron Paul to stand up there and say, ‘people hate us because we intervene in their lives’ and for (Rudy) Giuliani to say ‘that’s ridiculous,’ that blew my mind,” said Bofferding.

“Our imperialistic foreign policy is the biggest threat to this country, not groups of terrorists that have no state sponsor,” Bofferding said. “The first thing you have to do is stop subsidizing oppressive regimes in the Middle East.”

This is Noam Chomsky 101, and Chomsky has rock-star status among the perpetually-aggrieved college student community, despite being one of those people over 30 they’re not supposed to trust. That Paul (or Kucinich or Gravel on the left) would have a similar appeal saying the exact same things shouldn’t be much of a surprise.