Lone Star- Ron Paul

The American Conservative ^ | June 18, 2007 | Michael Brendan Dougherty

[joeu]

Paul’s doggedness in advancing the causes of individual responsibility and limited government could intimidate almost anyone who clings to the label “conservative” or “libertarian.” Perhaps that is why he avoids those abused designations and calls himself a “constitutionalist.” His philosophy is simple: “no government intervention, not in personal life, not in economic life, not in affairs of other nations.”

[Abcdefg]

You are welcome to your opinion, but I refuse to support one socialist to defeat another. We have always gotten more of the same big government because of that kind of thinking.
So, who do you support?

[JJTHEBULL]

No, if you read the article he specifically states hes not for anarchy and such a philosophy would leave our nations borders unguarded. Also, we dont need the federal government doing everything. Thats why we have states, they were supposed to take care of issues like education, abortion, and welfare. Those issues can be debated in the states and decided in the states without federal interference.

[JJTHEBULL]

No, if you read the article he specifically states hes not for anarchy and such a philosophy would leave our nations borders unguarded. Also, we dont need the federal government doing everything. Thats why we have states, they were supposed to take care of issues like education, abortion, and welfare. Those issues can be debated in the states and decided in the states without federal interference.

[Xenalyte]

Surprising, isn’t it, that the ONLY true Constitutionalist in this race is vilified all over the biggest “conservative” site on the Web?

[Xenalyte]

Yeah, God forbid we get behind a conservative. Let’s get us a RINO with name recognition so we can elect someone with an R behind his name! Who cares if our next president loves Democrat policies and ignores the Constitution?

(Besides me and the other Paul supporters, I mean.)

[Xenalyte]

Don’t let the fact that that is NOT what Dr. Paul said stand in your way.

[babyfreep]

You know, I think it really is surprising that the candidates or U.S. politicians in general aren’t more like him. I’m still not sure I see him as “presidential” material, but I like most of his ideas, I like his resolve and I like most of his truth.
That being said, I’m really a Duncan Hunter fan at this point. He’s got many of the same qualities I like about RP and more and he is “presidential”, imho.

[Dead Corpse]

No. Actually, by trying to kill conservatism... it's you who are supporting the Liberal rise to power.

Thanks for nothing... Go find someone else's Republic to poison from within...

[chaos_5]

That level of states rights/government went out with the Civil War. Ron Paul may mean well, and his rhetoric appeals to many, but it simply is not going to fly in this day and age.

Piss and moan all you like its not going to change the fact that we have a strong central Federal government. If we still had pre-Civil War state run education, most citizens of southern states would be illiterate.

(not that the public school system is the best, but at least it IS there)

Sure, the Feds should not be as deeply involved in our everyday affairs as the are. Some down sizing is in order, but Ron advocates a culling of the Federal government that is simply unrealistic.

[Abcdefg]

Kids in government schools are barely educated at all. They are “socialized”. And I betcha kids were MUCH better educated before the advent of federally controlled government schools which, by the way, are not Constitutional. (The States and the people never granted that power to the Feds)

[Abcdefg]

Your gripe is with the U.S. Constitution, not with Ron Paul.

[Publius]

Like me, you've been here a long time. I've tried to get the Paul supporters to explain how he would get us back to the Constitution and restore the Republic. I got one dialog going where the Paul supporter had some good facts, and we went a few rounds. Another dialog died when the supporter admitted he lacked the scholarship in pre-Civil War American history to maintain the dialog. (I sent him to the library with a reading list). Along the way, a Paul detractor, one of our more obnoxious long-time FReepers, took a personal shot at me. So here goes, again.

I have assumed from the beginning of Dr. Paul's candidacy that his goal is to return to the America that existed before the Civil War -- minus slavery, of course. The America we lost was defined by a Constitution written for a republic of farmers. But long before the Civil War, the nation had industrialized, and most of its basic concepts had changed, thanks to the work of Webster and Clay. We are the America that Hamilton created, not the America that Jefferson wanted to preserve. If I understand what a Paul administration would look like, we could expect the following:

• The restriction of the federal government to the 5 explicit powers and 7 implied powers granted it by the Constitution. That means only 3 federal crimes -- treason, piracy and counterfeiting. All other responsibilities would devolve to the states. Entitlements would either be run by the states, or handed over to churches, charities and benevolent associations.
• The end of federal taxation as we know it and a return to excises, imposts and dunning the states for their share of the federal budget. With most items devolved to the states, the federal budget would be small, and Congress would meet for 6 weeks a year and then go home.
• The end of the fiat dollar, paying off of the national debt and returning to the gold standard. The London Bill Market, closed since 1914, would be reopened, and real bills maturing to gold coin would circulate along with gold coin itself.
• The end of our large standing army, which the Constitution permits to exist for only a 2 year period anyway. We would have a Coast Guard to protect our shores and some kind of air defense system, but the Army would return to the state militias that existed before the National Guard system was created in 1910.
• American foreign policy would become isolationist. We would come home, close our borders, guard our shores, expel the UN and mind our own business. We would no longer use our dollars or military to take over various sectors of the planet. We would have a much smaller global footprint and would end any dream of an American world empire.

My area of expertise is the period between the Revolution and the Civil War, and I find a return to the America of Monroe and Jackson to be a very seductive concept. I would be quite comfortable in the America that existed before Lincoln, provided it were possible to return to those halcyon days -- minus slavery, of course.

The US shipped its manufacturing capabilities abroad to the Third World, and we now make our money moving piles of electronic currency around -- something that Hamilton, a believer in manufactures, would have frowned upon. The problem we face is that the changes sought by Hamilton and wrought by Webster, Clay and Lincoln are irreversible. So let me pose some observations and questions:

• Corporations were strictly regulated by the states before the Civil War. Afterward, 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 Lincoln’s powerful federal government for the people, i.e. using Hamiltonian means to achieve Jeffersonian ends. This was what the Progressive agenda was all about. Franklin Roosevelt built on that to define a whole new paradigm of democratic socialism -- using 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 only those powers granted by the Constitution, then who gains control? In a global marketplace, the states are going to find themselves 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.
• With the American people believing that only Big Government can protect them from Big Capitalism and that Big Government is the proper means by which the American people take care of each other, how does one convince the American people to go back to the days of Alexis de Toqueville and his classic tome Democracy in America? We have lost the ancient American trait of self-reliance, as Hurricane Katrina proved. How do you convince the American people to give up the protections they have relied upon from their federal government? Most people have based their retirement on those government checks.
• You would need a worldwide financial crash and the involuntary imposition of a worldwide gold standard to get people to rethink the role of the modern state in their lives. How do you return to a hard money standard without inflicting massive pain?
• After the War of 1812, even President Madison, father of the Constitution, believed we needed a standing army. Power, like nature, abhors a vacuum. If America comes home and minds its own business, who steps into our shoes to run the planet? Macchiavelli says someone is going to try. The European Union? Russia? China? Iran? The United Nations (after relocation to Geneva)? It's a question that has to be answered.

To return to those less complicated days of Monroe and Jackson, the question arises, How can it be done without the kind of pain we experienced from 1929 to 1940 -- or the pain we experienced from 1861 to 1865? While I'd like to go back to the way things were, I fear the events that could force it to happen.

Returning to original intent is the purest definition of conservatism. But how do you get to there from here, and how do you get the American people to change their collective mindset?

[Martins kid]

The self-righteous attitude of RP supporters doesn’t impress me.

[Martins kid]

Your know it all attitude and self-righteous comments are probably why the RP fan club is so small.

[Dead Corpse]

And your whining idiocy is why this country is swirling the toilet bowl.

I suppose you support Bush's "don't patch the holes in the hull until after we're done bailing water out of the ship" as well?

You RINO's are all the same. All talking points and no principle.

[chaos_5]

I betcha kids were MUCH better educated before the advent of federally controlled government schools which, by the way, are not Constitutional

Fist, just because something is not EXPLICITLY enumerated in the constitution does not make that thing unconstitutional.

As for you assumption that kids were MUCH better educated before the Feds got involved with education, I will have to flash back to the 1860"s. Why? This marks the beginning of the Civil War, and the reconstruction that was to follow. During this time the Federal government built schools in the south. Albeit segregated schools. So, one one hand [before the war] you had the states running education and there was none. On the other hand [after the war] you have the Feds building schools. Now I ask you, were the "kids" better off with or without Federal involvement in education?

BTW, just for the record, I favor charter schools and vouchers. I am no fan of our public education system.

[Abcdefg]

"Fist, just because something is not EXPLICITLY enumerated in the constitution does not make that thing unconstitutional."

You have never read the Bill of Rights or the Federalist Papers, have you?

[Abcdefg]

Check out the Wiki entry on the Supreme Court decision in United States v. Lopez.

Rehnquist delivered the opinion of the court: "To uphold the Government's contentions here, we would have to pile inference upon inference in a manner that would bid fair to convert congressional authority under the Commerce Clause to a general police power of the sort retained by the States. Admittedly, some of our prior cases have taken long steps down that road, giving great deference to congressional action. The broad language in these opinions has suggested the possibility of additional expansion, but we decline here to proceed any further. To do so would require us to conclude that the Constitution's enumeration of powers does not presuppose something not enumerated, and that there never will be a distinction between what is truly national and what is truly local. This we are unwilling to do."

[Abcdefg]

The Tenth Amendment says: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."

[chaos_5]

You have never read the Bill of Rights or the Federalist Papers, have you?

As a matter of fact I have read the Bill of Rights and a fair bit of the Federalist Papers. I think you missed my point about explicitly enumerated.

I'll use the school example, since it fits with our postings. You used the example of United States v. Lopez to show a decision where the courts had essentially said the governments interpretation of the Commerce Clause is too much of a stretch.

This leads me to my point, things like the Commerce Clause are used to justify many things that are not explicitly in the constitution. Like roads, where dose it say the Feds shall build roads? It doesn't, and if my memory is correct, it was a big debate back in the days of Madison. Even the National Bank was an issues, and Jackson destroyed that.

My point remains the same, many things are inferred to be Constitutional that are not explicitly in the Constitutional.