Posted on 01/24/2010 5:58:31 PM PST by rabscuttle385
Calling the Reagan Presidency a failure and rejecting the Reagan agenda is not mere criticism. Its hatefilled lunacy. Turning around and evoking Reagan in his last election run for potus, makes Paul a hypocrite. Paul’s long friendship with Murray Rothbard, the founder of modern libertarianism, his friendly association with Lew Rockwell and his praising the Birchers just last year, is off the wall. And this is not guilt by association either, so don’t even go there. All these guys think alike. Their politics are fringe wackoism.
What problem do you have w/ “Birchers”?
Since its inception c.1958, the JBS has been at the forefront of political conspiracies and fringe idiocies. Conspiracy paranoiacs can not be trusted.
“...fring idiocies”
Such as, what? Please explain if you can.
Yes, he's been a politician for quite a while, I'll give you that. But part of the ESTABLISHMENT? Come on! That's ridiculous. The current GOP Establishment (& most Democrats) despise Rep. Paul, 'cuz they know that he represents a threat to their power.
Maybe I’m slow this morning.
One the one hand you have the Paul bashers citing
Paul’s faults (call them line items 1 through 9)
with the expected level of vehemance and ridicule.
On the other hand you have the Paul supporters clinging
to line item 10, where Paul makes a rudimentary kind of
sense, while completely ignoring the other 9 items where
he fails miserably, again peppered with the expected
level of vehemance and ridicule.
No amount of rhetoric or explanation will make the Paul
supporters aware of the “fail” line items, and similarly
the Paul bashers cannot see through these same items
to glimpse the one item where Paul is right.
Maybe I’m slow this morning.
lol, RINO. Here is a challenge for you find something he voted yes on.
Good article.
One can argue if purely mechanical, economic measures in absence of a religious awakening could rescue the Republic, — and this is where Ron Paul’s libertarian idelology fails, — but the analysis of the current state of economic affairs is spot on. Notably, no one made a contrary argument based on the article itself, and caricatures in the age of Photoshop come cheaply.
That's great....but then again, so does Congress every time it wants to use the Interstate Commerce Clause to justify the next expansion of federal power into this, that, or the other area. Merely quoting the Constitution does not equal having a really sound knowledge of the document.
However, having said that, I realized that I did make an error -- in addition to RP's references to the Constitution and Bill of Rights, I should have added "the writings of the Founding Fathers", which while not laws in and of themselves, do clearly state their positions and intentions of how and why certain portions of the Consitution were written.
Again, true....but we should note that you need to specify which Founders. Since they didn't always agree, even on foundational issues. Which Founder? Madison? Jefferson? Hamilton? Adams? All involved in crafting the Constitution, but all obviously having some shades of difference.
As for the "Constitution and foreign policy" -- the powers allotted to the President and Congress were designed to avoid war, because war was profitable only to a few while created suffering and reduced prosperity for the rest of the country. There are many quotes by the Founding Fathers to attest to this. So you are correct in that "isolationism" was not written into the Constitution, but many of the Founding Fathers writings seemed to suggest that they saw the US as a sort of "Switzerland" -- armed to the teeth in defense of our own country, while holding the money and prosperity when European countries were killing each other:
Well, no, that's not what the Constitution actually says. The powers were designed to separate power over foreign policy between the executive and the judiciary - that's it. They were not specifically designed to "avoid war," though they and we obviously agree that doing so is generally a good thing.
Yet, the same President who played a primary role in formulating the Constitution (Jefferson) was also the one who sent the Navy over to thrash the Barbary States. This presents an interesting problem for the Ron Paul/isolationistas who think that the Founders intended only for the US military to be used in defence of the American homeland. See, Jefferson - who obviously knew more about what "the Founders intended" than you, I, and Ron Paul combined, had no problem with fighting that war, even though these states were not threatening the American homeland, merely our commercial interests overseas. Therefore, we can surmise that Jefferson felt that war in the defence of overseas US interests was a legitimate use of the US military, despite what the Paulistinians and Buchananites today would have us to believe.
Again, these are the Founding Father's "opinions", not just Ron' Paul's, and they are not laws, but they provided the world view of how the Constitution was written and administered at the founding of our country.
I figured that somebody, at some point, was going to bring up Washington's Farewell Address, since somebody always manages to take it out of context.
The problem with appealing to this address, apart from the fact that it not the Constitution, nor is it commentary on the Constitution (such as the Federalist Papers), is that Washington's comments pertain to a particular set of circumstances which no longer exist. That's the same problem with Buchanan's "Fortress America" approach - it's unrealistic because America no longer is half a world and three months away from the rest of the world. We have enemies who, in Washington's day didn't even know we existed, but who now could potentially be in a position to drop missiles on us literally in minutes, and who definitely can threaten American economic interests overseas in more completely comprehensive ways than would have ever even have been though possible in Washington's day. In short, technology changes, and we'd better change our outlook, too. We don't live in Washington's world anymore, and it would be suicide to try to act as if we did. While his general principle that we shouldn't involve ourselves in every little squabble the world over holds true, the idea that we can hunker down behind our oceans and be safe is ridiculous.
Personally, I think that America has every right to defend and protect itself the best of it ability. But I've yet to discover why I should pay for defending every country in the known world and send my son to defend people who should be defending themselves.
Well see, now you're confusing some things here. I'm not advocating the sort of "Invade-the-world/invite-the-world" policies that George Bush followed. However, neither Bush's way nor Ron Paul's way are rational. If Ron Paul had his way, we wouldn't even have a foreign policy - until a hostile world turned against us by those who are envious of our prosperity suddenly hit our shores one day, or come streaming up across our southern border (think the board game entitled, appropriately enough, Fortress America). Obviously, we have to have a foreign policy that DOES engage the rest of the world, and does so for the purpose of advancing America's best interests. Trying to claim that this is "unconstitutional" belies a serious lack of understanding of what the constitution says, or worse, a desire to simply apply the term "constitution" to one's own viewpoints, regardless of the actual text of that document.
In earlier times, countries went to war with one another and America let in only the best of the refugees. If a despot became unbearable, his own people overthrew him -- it cost America nothing and some Americans helping to rebuild it, might even profit from it. In short, Americans wanted to live in peace and freedom -- and profit.
I agree. Which makes me suspect that Jefferson would have been willing to fight "a war for oil" too - though hopefully not stick around for years after in a never-ending occupation.
But today, we seem to think that "our government knows best". We let -- even encourage -- our government to plant their big foot on foreign soil and use our sons to do it to fight for other people's peace freedom & profit, instead of our own. We let government and big business set up the war scenarios that allow their cronies to profit, while we even pay for their trouble with our taxes. Our mindset has changed radically from that of our ancestors -- they were more concerned about themselves and their own honor & prosperity, while we are more arrogant, assuming that we know what's best for the world.
Well, in one sense, the whole point to giving the federal government the powers over foreign policy and warmaking was because the FOUNDERS thought that "our government knows best," as well. There's a reason the individual states and individual citizens are not constitutionally allowed to conduct their own foreign policy, and why that federative power was given to the federal government.
HOW the federal government uses that is any entirely different discussion and one in which I'd probably be largely in agreement with you about, but THAT the federal government has sole power in these areas is undeniable.
Criticize him if you will, but I don't think that it does our country harm to remember the original intentions of the Founding Fathers and if Ron Paul is the reminder, well then good for him.
The problem is that people need to be reminded of what the Constitution actually says, not what one guy who interprets it wrongly a lot of the time thinks it says.
big ol’ bump
Ron Paul opposes Roe Vs. Wade, and wants the states to decide. If he were Governor of Texas, he would vote to ban it (if RVW were struck down). That’s far more anti-abortion than Brown. Look, I favor a 50 state ban, but this would be a huge start.
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