Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Ron Paul loves Guy Fawkes

Yesterday I complained about the way the Times wrote about Guy Fawkes Day celebrations in England. Today, elsewhere in the same esteemed daily, in the national political page, to wit, I find a delightful article about how libertarian GOP candidate for Prez Ron Paul is using Guy Fawkes as a symbol of good resistance against anti-individual government-uber-alles sprawl. Libertarian fans of Ron Paul know of Guy Fawkes through the futuristic graphic novel V for Vendetta. There a terrorist modeled after Fawkes takes on a fascist government that has taken over Britain. So the individual-freedom-loving Right reads Fawkes as anti-fascist. I'm not going to give the web address for Paul's fund-raising scheme, lest readers of this blog accidentally click it and donate, but you can certainly find it on the web if you are even just slightly inclined. The title of the article in today's paper is "Candidate's Pleased to Remember This Fifth of November." I'm fascinated. Terrorism as libertarianism. It makes some sense (and always has made sense as a matter of domestic politics [think Oklahoma City]), since the libertarian Right has been driven nuts by all the Big Government entailed in the neo-cons' response to 9/11.