Why So Many Conservatives Don't Like Ron Paul

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[shekkian]

Ron Paul as the nominee will guarantee President Hillary, and Ron Paul as President will almost guarantee another 9/11 attack, or worse.

[ejonesie22]

Ah, it’s the little details that make a nation a republic...

[Wallace T.]

What of the FAA, the CDC, NASA, the Interstates, etc.

Why do we need an FAA in the first place? Federal regulation of the airline industry has led to an oligopoly that, when combined with the security measures instituted in the wake of 9-11, has made airplane travel miserable. Modern airports resemble medium security prisons with constant moronic, Big Brotherish announcements (e.g, no smoking in the terminals when smoking has been prohibited for over a decade), airline personnel ruder than the clerks at the drivers' license office, and TSA agents who specialize in body searches of nuns, Olsen Twin look-alikes, and 80 year olds in wheelchairs. Becoming a pilot is financially prohibitive, to a great extent due to regulation, with the promises of massive ownership of individual aircraft predicted 50 years ago never materializing. The Centers for Disease Control is another function that would better be handled by private enterprise. If grand scale, British-style socialized medicine is bad, so is the small scale attempts at it. As for NASA, the lunar expedition and the space shuttle were/are boondoggles that benefited some sectors of the economy, such as the aerospace industry, to the detriment of the taxpayers. Prior to the development of the Interstate system, numerous states were building toll roads, but plans to build others were deterred by "free" Federal funds. Now the maintenance costs for the Interstates plus the need to fund new highways have caused several states, including North Carolina and Pennsylvania, to consider tolling the freeways, especially those that largely serve out of state traffic.

Irrespective of what one thinks of Ron Paul's foreign policies, he is on the mark with respect to the need to restrain the Federal government to the limits of the Constitution and scrap such nonsense as it being a "living" document or turning the "general welfare" and "interstate commerce" clauses into a justification to any and all expansions of government. So-called conservatives are in some respects as enamored with big and intrusive government as the worst nanny state liberal. You only have to look at the areas of society where government controls or heavily regulates to see where most of our problems are: transportation, education, water and power, etc. Those areas that are minimally or moderately regulated, such as retail stores, entertainment, food production, financial services, the Internet, provide a wide variety of products and services that satisfy customer needs. In many respects, I dislike Wal-Mart, McDonald's, Time Warner, etc., but I am not compelled to patronize them. However, the state owns the guns, the handcuffs, and the keys to the jailhouse to make me obey.

"Law 'n' order" advocates, big government "conservatives", "compassionate conservatives", and their ilk are the flip side of the same statist coin as are the nanny staters and socialists of the Left. Both groups worship government power. American uniqueness came not from our government, but from people less bound by government than was the case in the rest of the world. That is the ideal to which America must return.

[lormand]

Surrender Shrimp Ping

Sorry for the late reply...work interrupted my fun here.

[Allegra]

Sorry for the late reply...work interrupted my fun here.

I hate it when that happens. ;-)

[mnehring]

Modern airports resemble medium security prisons with constant moronic, Big Brotherish announcements (e.g, no smoking in the terminals when smoking has been prohibited for over a decade), airline personnel ruder than the clerks at the drivers' license office, and TSA agents who specialize in body searches of nuns, Olsen Twin look-alikes, and 80 year olds in wheelchairs.

I take it you never go overseas. Our airports are closer to shopping malls than the big brother prison you describe. To put it simply for you, airports are a point of entry into this country, like a border. They are also a main point of commerce between States and internationally. Both items fall within the Constitutional authority of Congress.

[reagan_fanatic]

[ejonesie22]

Uniform inspection regulations and control of US airspace comes to mind...

You are talking about Airline business regulations, which may or may not need to be relaxed, but a uniform approach to operations across US airspace, and rigorous and uniform aircraft maintenance and inspection is a good thing.

Don't get me started on NASA, the space program has been about the best thing the Feds have ever done in regards to technological progress up until the last few years, and I am hopeful they will get back on track with the new CEV project.

In 2007 the approach that all things Federal is bad is naive at best.

[rlmorel]

Some really asinine quotes there. Let's see:

1.) "If you understand what motivates suicide terrorism, you'll realize it's not radical Islam."

Oh. I guess all the Mormons, Catholics, Jews, Wiggans and Buddhists are strapping vests on themselves and blowing pizza eating patrons to smithereens, eh?

2.) A lot fewer lives died on 9/11 than they do in less than a month on our highways.

People who died in highway accidents weren't deliberately BUTCHERED by people who say they did it on behalf of their GOD. Really. If Ron Paul (or anyone else) thinks this is somehow appropriate or germaine to what happened on 9/11, they they not only have no business in government, they have no business being in any job requiring critical thinking.

You know, you have been around here for a while...when you post things like this it tends to distract from any other cogent arguments you might have made about anything.

You should choose your quotes to butress your opinion, not bring on ridicule, which these two quotes(and those are not the only ones) are sure to do.

[tacticalogic]

That's not to say that Ron Paul doesn't have his strong points. He is committed to smaller government, slashing spending, liberty, and the Constitution.

So he's being praised for that, and simultaneously damned for not embracing the changes in the federal government over the last 70 years. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

[Wallace T.]

I do not dispute the authority the Constitution grants to the Federal government over foreign commerce. However, the vast majority of airports do not service flights from outside the United States. As for interstate commerce, the original intent of that clause was to prevent the states from establishing tariff barriers or quotas on goods from other states. Federalist Paper No. 42 states: "A very material object of this power was the relief of the States which import and export through other States, from the improper contributions levied on them by the latter. Were these at liberty to regulate the trade between State and State, it must be foreseen that ways would be found out to load the articles of import and export, during the passage through their jurisdiction, with duties which would fall on the makers of the latter and the consumers of the former. We may be assured by past experience, that such a practice would be introduced by future contrivances; and both by that and a common knowledge of human affairs, that it would nourish unceasing animosities, and not improbably terminate in serious interruptions of the public tranquillity." The author cites comparable agreements in other confederations, such as those in the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland. Under the doctrine of original intent, the "interstate commerce" clause established a common market in the United States and eliminated the mercantilist policies to which we were subject under British rule. Our Founding Fathers, even those who were in favor of a strong government like Alexander Hamilton, would be disgusted if they realized that the government they established became far more intrusive and interventionist than the worst the British crown would offer.

If any mall made you wait in line for 10 minutes or more as rent-a-cops performed invasive screening, was filled with stores and restaurants filled with poor merchandise and surly sales personnel, and where you were forced to wait for hours in a stuffy location without bathroom access, it would close down in days for lack of business. This is the clear difference between free choice and coercion.

[FredHead47]

If you understand what motivates suicide terrorism, you'll realize it's not radical Islam.

Then who or what is the motivator?

[lormand]

I just replied to your comment on Youtube. :)

[Plummz]

... most of the “right-wing” bloggers polled are no doubt semi-literate authoritarians who support the anti-American Trotskyite imperial foreign policy of Hillary Clinton and Dick Cheney ...

there’s the answer.

hope this helps.

[Wallace T.]

The Federal government is clearly charged with the protection of our nation from foreign attack, which in the current environment clearly covers air and space attack. When it steps beyond those bounds, it is in violation of its Constitutional mandate. The "interstate commerce" clause of the US Constitution was intended as a restraint upon the states establishing tariff barriers or quotas on goods and services from other states, as Federalist Paper No, 42 clearly points out. In effect, it established a common market within the United States, and is clearly not the "wax nose" big government advocates use to justify all sorts of Federal intrusion.

If governmental regulation is necessary, a premise that I would question given the negative effect regulation has on innovation and market forces, there is no reason it could not be done by the states, which regulate and cooperate in such areas as motor vehicle law, the Uniform Commercial Code, insurance regulation, and numerous other matters. As for NASA, while there may have been some reason to have it during the Cold War era, it mostly served as another avenue for redistribution of wealth, as much as are farm subsidies or food stamps. No doubt there were some scientific achievements by the space program, but the tax monies taken from the private sector may well have effected more and better achievements if directed by private investors rather than government bureaucrats.

The fact that we are in the 21st Century is no justification for more intrusive government. The principles of God-given rights and the dangers of powerful, central government are universal. The last century saw over 100 million human beings die at the hands of tyrannical governments, Communist mostly, but also Nazi, fascist, or Islamist regimes as well. Any American who believes "if can't happen here" only deludes himself.

[bcsco]

The Kool-Aid has really been dished out royally lately, hasn’t it.

[bcsco]

Can you imagine the volume of paper it takes to print out these voluminous talking points that are apparently emailed hourly? But then again, when there’s only 50 of you to begin with, I guess it wouldn’t be all that much, would it?

[tacticalogic]

Seems like there used to be a lot more than 50.

[bcsco]

Seems like there used to be a lot more than 50.

Attrition :)

[ejonesie22]

Okey dokey...

But I was not talking about defense, or at least defense from Intrusion from a foreign power. I was also more concerned with regulation of technical specifications and operations, not the commercial side, as I stated in my post.

I do not want large air craft full of people hurtling around our airways being controlled from towers that are under individual state control. We are not talking covered wagons here. The level of cooperation needed to maintain US commercial airspace is too high to leave up to 50 individual legislative bodies. So too are aircraft inspection rules and pilot certification. Do you really want that left up to individual legislatures?

I don’t like how big the government is either, but give me a break, there are some things now in this age that have to have some nationwide uniformity.

As for the rest, I highly doubt private effort would have gotten us to the moon. I find pride in the achievements of our great nation, I don’t view everything as a “wealth redistribution system”, that is a very cynical approach and that has not gotten us to our role as a world leader.