Posted on 05/19/2007 5:22:40 PM PDT by jdm
It's a fine line between quixotic and committed, and just where Ron Paul falls is an open question as the Texas congressman pursues the 2008 Republican presidential nomination.
The case for quixotic: It's a unique conceit to run as an anti-Iraq-war candidate in a generally pro-war party; to vow to eliminate myriad federal agencies, including the CIA, the IRS and the Federal Reserve; and to oppose every act of the federal government not specifically approved in the Constitution (including niceties such as congressional gold medals for such people as Mother Teresa, Rosa Parks and Pope John Paul II).
"I've advocated over the years the elimination of most big-government things I can't find in the Constitution," Paul said in an interview.
Trying to explain that during a recent presidential debate, Paul said, "I'm a strong believer in original intent" of the Constitution's framers. To which moderator Chris Matthews, the MSNBC television personality, responded with a disdainful, "Oh, God."
The case for committed: If somebody needs to drag the Republican Party back to its roots, Paul said, "I'm offering that alternative."
Paul was one of six House of Representatives Republicans who voted against the 2002 authorization to use force in Iraq, based on the same wariness of excessive international involvement that long guided Republican foreign-policy thinking. Traceable to George Washington's warning against entangling foreign alliances, its post-World War II followers -- including "Mr. Republican" Sen. Robert Taft of Ohio -- likely would share Paul's view of President Bush's adventures in democratic nation-building as muddleheaded folly.
"He touches a nerve out there," said Bruce Buchanan, a political scientist at the University of Texas. "There are Republicans who believe it was a mistake to get in there to begin with, and that's the Paul constituency."
(Excerpt) Read more at startribune.com ...
Very doubtful.
Both. It’s just one out of list of nonsense all you GOP lemmings cough up verbatim on the subject of Ron Paul. It is not any more accurate or informative for the repetition. It doesn’t make any of you look intelligent or politically savvy, it just makes you look sophomoric.
Offer up reasoned discourse supported by evidence or step off. Simple as that.
Gotta love the Ron Paulies for posting more on the Internet than any other group since the Howard Deaniacs.
Sadly, a libertarian isolationism doesn’t work now, and I don’t trust an isolationist to manage the current Romanesque empire that we currently have. It would be like asking a pacifist to manage a boxing match.
In addition, the dogma of the libertarian isolationist — that if we have foreigners who hurt us, then it’s because we’re outside of our own borders — sounds a lot like the pronouncements of the far left. Personally, I grant that people might have legitimate complaints against the US (heck, we have them here!) but that does not justify the acts of war we’ve suffered.
You’re very wrong. My failure to join the Cult of Ron is testament to my independent thinking.
Thanks for playing.
I’m not a lemming, but I watched the debate, and he came off looking and sounding like a raving lunatic. I’d no more want him running the country than I would Cindy Sheehan.
LOL
You're so . . . fretful.
“...oppose every act of the federal government not specifically approved in the Constitution (including niceties such as congressional gold medals for such people as Mother Teresa, Rosa Parks and Pope John Paul II).”
Unfortunately, this means that Ron Paul must oppose any attempts to control illegal immigration since there is no explicit language authorizing Congress to do so.
If you dispute the above, please provide an explicit statement in the Constitution giving these powers to any branch of the government.
If you can’t provide that statement, then, it follows, that Ron Paul is a fraud.
I agree with most of your assessment. The exceptions are the isolationism, of course, and your assumption that Paul wants a return to a pastoral America. Paul’s Congressional website is a good source for information on his system of belief. He writes a regular column there on the subject.
The charge of isolationism is simply a hyperbolic reaction to his positions opposing adventurism and nation-building. Paul has stated on numerous occasions that we should act to protect our allies. The fact that he offered a declaration of war and letters of marque and reprisal against the Taliban and Afghanistan following 9/11 is sufficient evidence by itself that he is no isolationist. Paul’s foreign policy positions are classically conservative and Republican. The rise of the neocons within the GOP has simply eradicated them. Paul seeks to reinstate them. No more, no less.
By insisting on limiting Congressional and executive power to those explicit in the Constitution, Paul in no way seeks to return us to a bucolic and pastoral society. Once again, that is a hyperbolic characterization of his positions. There is nothing that says the return of Federalism and devolving power to the states must be accompanied by an agricultural renaissance. Obviously, with corporations operating nationally and globally, the regulation of interstate commerce by the federal government would be far greater than in Hamilton’s or Lincoln’s day. However, simply limiting that regulation to original intent does not necessitate the dissolution of corporate America.
I’ll say this for him: whether I agree with him on everything or not, I think he’s consistent, principled, and has courage in convictions. Not quite so sure about Rudy McRomney.
Good analysis and this is the $64 million question:
“Power, like nature, abhors a vacuum. If America comes home and minds its own business, who steps into our shoes to run the planet? Someone is certainly going to try. The European Union? Russia? China? Iran? The United Nations (relocated to Geneva)? It’s a question that has to be answered.”
I worked on Ron Paul's first campaign when I was a kid. He has never changed the way he approaches things. His rabid committment to the US Constitution should be the rule in Washington and not the exception.
As far as him being "evil" that is absurd. He's a good man.
I'm pleased he did this. I covered much of the same territory in Fighting Under World War II Rules. Even before the neocons, we were constitutionally sloppy in the instruments we used to fight a war.
Obviously, with corporations operating nationally and globally, the regulation of interstate commerce by the federal government would be far greater than in Hamilton’s or Lincoln’s day. However, simply limiting that regulation to original intent does not necessitate the dissolution of corporate America.
We get to the meat of the matter. Corporations were strictly regulated by the states before the Civil War. Following the Civil War, we were pretty much governed by Big Business in general and the railroads in particular.
With the states' rights position discredited by the Civil War, Jeffersonians turned to using that powerful federal government for popular ends, i.e. using Hamiltonian means to achieve Jeffersonian ends. The Progressives, who branched off from northeastern and midwestern Republicanism in the 1870's, finally achieved power under Theodore Roosevelt in 1901, and then Franklin Roosevelt built on that to define a whole new paradigm of democratic socialism. FDR's paradigm was to use government as the tool of the people's will to control the forces of the market.
This raises the question of a power vacuum. Should the federal government retreat to the powers granted by the Constitution -- and only those powers -- then who gains control? In a global marketplace, the states are going to find themselves fairly powerless in regulating corporations. One would probably end up with some form of corporate fascism, sometimes referred to humorously as "Proctor and Gamble with the death penalty".
This would indicate that even under a Paul administration, it would be necessary to utilize a loose construction of the Interstate Commerce Clause to prevent the undermining of democratic rule.
But that still begs certain questions:
These questions have bedeviled me for a long time. Returning to original intent sounds like a great idea, and it's certainly the purest definition of conservatism. But how do you get there from here, and how do you lead the American people to change their collective -- and "collective" is the right word! -- mindset?
Ping
If only.
Ron Paul said that U.S. bombing of Iraq probably contributed to the terrorist attacks of 2001.
So why do the radical Islam terrorists terrorize other countries?
Could it be just plain Jihad?
Ron Paul is a nice man, and an intelligent man, but doesn’t seem to understand GLOBAL terrorism. A very naive man, I’m afraid.
What a stretch! Not even Bill Clinton could get that far off track.
How about just enforcing the laws? Isn't that part of the job description?
BTW: perhaps you ought to take a moment to compare what our current president is doing with what it says in the Constitution.
That could be an eye-opener.
I noticed that on Fox News. If you don’t agree with their line of thought you are tagged as a “lunatic.” It’s so lame. I love Ron Paul because obviously he is not on some corporate payroll.
Trying to fill an asylum?
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