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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?