Ron Paul and the Lodestar of Liberty

Ron Paul is not a nut. He is honorable and intelligent. I have talked with Congressman Paul about politics and policies. He is consistent and principled. Much of what he says is true. The Constitution is routinely ignored by politicians of both political parties. Government spending, particularly entitlements, is wildly out of control. The crucial constitutional concepts of federalism and limited government are tacitly denied and this denial is the crux of many of our social and political problems.

But Ron Paul holds the vain hope that American government would return to constitutional law anytime soon, even if he did win the presidency. Congress, the judiciary, legal education, and tradition have imparted momentum to the living constitution school of thought. Bring about an actual return to the Constitution requires more than a snap of the president's fingers. Federal courts routinely "interpret" the Constitution in ways directly in conflict with the plain language of the document. At best, a president can only appoint judges the Senate will confirm and wait for natural turnover.

A lot of persuasion is necessary before Americans (including our elites and their institutions) change their way thinking. We in fact still need a crusade to change hearts and minds more than a candidacy.

And if we are going to return to first principles, remember that the Constitution is not the foundational document of our American experiment in individual liberty. It was preceded by the Articles of Confederation. Prior to the Articles of Confederation, which were adopted after independence, the Continental Congress acted as the original government of the United States and successfully waged a war against the great superpower on the planet with very little real authority. The fundamental principles of American government were established long the Constitution was adopted.

What does matter is the Declaration of Independence. The divine endowment of all people with liberty comes directly out of this document of 1776 and it is to this document that serious friends of liberty should look for inspiration and restoration. And what was the Declaration of Independence? It was, in effect, a declaration of war against the British Empire.

It was not an isolationist document but a universalist document. It speaks, pointedly, to the rest of the world. It talks about the reasons that governments are formed (not just our government.) It was bold, sweeping, and international. And it was seen by the rest of the world as just that: A revolutionary document for all peoples, even if it applied specifically only to thirteen embattled colonies in North American.

Ron Paul wants to return us to the Constitution, as if it were a sacred document which granted us freedom. Our spiritual lodestar should be the Declaration of Independence, which remains a much more dangerous, much more powerful, and much more relevant document to our times.

Some policies Paul proposes are admirable. Why do we still have armies in Germany and in Korea, when both are rich, modern industrialized nations? Why does government have to do so much and why does "government" more and more mean centralized government in Washington? Why have a tax code which punishes productivity and which requires contortionist behavior from business?

But other parts of Paul's policies simply do not fit our age. The notion that we should disengage from the Middle East, for example, suggests that Israel is "just another nation," like, say, North Korea or Syria. The foundation of the Jewish state was based upon the undeniable facts of history continuing, dreadfully, through the Holocaust, that Jews are not "just another people," but are rather a persecuted people who were not welcome when escaping Nazified Europe. Ignoring that is ignoring salient history.

Likewise, the stark contrast between Israel and its neighbors (except, until the last three decades, the successful state of Lebanon) cannot be ignored, and the murderous intent of neighbors who seriously read in large numbers Mein Kampf and the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion is also a grim, absolute fact of the modern world. The notion that, on paper, Israel can make peace with these neighbors is not just pure theory, but it is theory which has failed the test of experience.

Paul also seems to doubt that people wish to do America harm because it is America, and that nuclear weapons change everything. Ever since H.G. Wells first used the term "atomic bomb" in his science fiction stories more than a century ago, it has become almost inevitable that true, horrific global war power was inevitable. Happily, America acquired fission weapons and then fusion weapons first. Happily also, America has had leaders willing to use that power to protect our nation and allies who would otherwise be unprotected.

And, as we learned from the Japanese in the Second World War and from radical Moslems today, the calculus of economic benefits and political rights which works very well in moderating and balancing the behavior of most people, simply does not work with everyone. Does anyone doubt that the Japanese would have used the atomic bomb on American cities or that radical Moslems will use thermonuclear bombs on America, if they can, even if it means massive casualties in our retaliation?

Liberty can no longer stand safely behind two vast oceans and decent men can no longer ignore their human brethren after Hitler, Stalin and Mao. As Lincoln today might have said "This world cannot long endure half slave and half free." This was also perhaps the greatest victory of the greatest conservative leader of our age: Ronald Reagan. Congressman Paul might recall the Gipper's Cold War strategy: "How about this: We win; they lose?"

Ronald Reagan, like Abraham Lincoln, understood the supra-constitutional importance of liberty in the fulfillment of America, and liberty to them meant more than just the liberty of American citizens. If the ideal which is America is to survive the totalitarian impulse which we see not only in North Korea and the Taliban, but among the Leftists in our own nation, then we need to recapture the fortitude of Washington, the vision of Lincoln and the clarity of Reagan. If we can do this and preserve the vestiges of the Constitution, fine.

But the vision of America is much more than the Constitution. It is much more than Congressman Paul sees. What Ron Paul proposes is not bad or dishonest. It is simply no longer enough for liberty and decency to survive in America or in the world.

[“When and if China wants to retake Formesa, it will do so and we will not be able to stop it”.]

>>>>Perhaps, or perhaps like the soviets sitting poised to take western Europe they’ll think twice if we have a presence.

The soviets were worried about our attacking them in an all out nucleur war.

[ “Moreover, a war against China, short of nuclear in that region would be a disaster for us.” ]

>>>>Exactly, so by staying in the region we prevent disaster and perhaps even nuclear war. It would be a disaster for the entire world, but that never stopped people like Hitler before and it won’t stop madmen in the future. Sticking your head in the sand won’t change that.

So, you are willing to fight a nucleur war over Formesa?

[ “As for South Korea and the Philippines and human rights-come on now, you are kidding right?” ]

>>>>>I lived in South Korea for a year. While it made me immensely thankful for our country, it doesn’t hold a candle to China’s. North Koreans are starving to death so that their soldiers can eat and ill leader can keep his large army poised to strike should the occasion warrant.

And who was comparing the two, ofcourse a communist country is always far worse.

But there is still a great deal of 'human rights' abuse going on in S. Korea.

[ “The South Koreans think we are the problem and want to reconcile with North.” ]

>>>>>Uh-huh...only it’s ALOT more complex than that...if they reconciled, what govt would take hold? As long as the U.S. is there, it sure won’t be communist. On the other hand communist China wouldn’t exactly care to have another Formosa/Japan/Phillipines on it’s doorstep in (North) Korea to inflame it’s own population with how miserable a faiulure communism is, with the latest example being Korea. Besides, I’ve heard this before with Germany. Germany reconciled and well lookie there, they’re a free people now, and we weren’t the problem after all! IN FACT once Rumsfeld offered to pull U.S. troops out of Germany and move them to a more grateful area like Poland the Germans had a fit and demanded we STAY!

What are you babbling about!

The S.Koreans want to reconcile with the North.

They see U.S. forces as a hinderence to that.

As for Germany asking for U.S. forces to stay, why not, they are putting alot of money into the German economy and it means less defense spending by the Germans.

[ “Besides it is China that is funding our WOT by buying our bonds”. ]

>>>>>Oh I get it, now YOU are kidding right?

No, that is a fact.

China is buying U.S. debt.

Mainland China and Hong Kong bought $177 billion of U.S. debt in the first seven months of 2003. Chinese holdings in the U.S. debt have more than doubled since 2001. Other countries holding major investments in the U.S. debt include Japan, the United Kingdom, Caribbean Banking Centers, Germany and Korea.

China’s stake in our nation’s finances is particularly significant because it is using its holdings to undervalue the American dollar and manipulate its own currency, the yuan. That helps the Chinese economy grow and takes jobs away from U.S. manufacturers, Tanner said.

http://www.house.gov/tanner/press108-101.htm

You are apparently feeling disrespected. Being a Nixon Republican, as were your parents, was better than being a McGovern Commiecrat or Demonrat. That does not mean that the Eisenhowers and Nixons were anything resembling ideal or even the best that could be elected. Eisenhower and Nixon and many of their followers were, at best, soulless squishball moderates and pragmatists and made careers of compromising until there was little left to compromise.

Eisenhower kissed soviet patoots with regularity as SHAEF commander. He was a military bureaucrat with little in the way of combat experience, named president of Columbia University after the war, nominated by dishonest tactics over Taft in 1952, urged by Truman to run as the Democrat POTUS candidate, stabbed Joe McCarthy with regularity, betrayed the Hungarian Revolution which occurred near simultaneously with similar events in Czechoslovakia, Poland and other captive nations, and gave us "Modern Republicanism" which was New Deal Democrat policy in elephant drag. He balanced a few budgets if anyone cared. Call that Main Street "conservatism." Green eyeshades, sleeve garters, clip coupons off bonds in the back room at the Civic Booster (strictly local) Bank & Trust. Yawn.

The best thing Nixon ever did was to bring up his daughter Julie and it is a shame that she never ran for the Senate from Pennsylvania. Other than that, Nixon loved the art of the deal with Chairman Mao, with Brezhnev and with anyone whomsoever. He very obviously disdained the idea of Ronaldus Maximus as POTUS since Ronaldus was not one of the sellout State Department loving, Glasnost enthusing establishmentarian types to whom Nixon sold his political soul at the outset. He wrote decent and informative books after he resigned. OTOH, he absolutely unforgivably appointed Herod Blackmun to SCOTUS, tried to appoint a lavender queen named G. Harold Carswell to SCOTUS and generally talked a good game while delivering little but rhetoric. Ironically, Carswell's nomination was defeated BEFORE he was arrested on his knees in a country club men's room. If you like smaller government, do you recall Nixon's wage and price controls and his monkeying with the money supply??? Then there was the choice of Feckless Ford (a Demonrat tamed puppy if ever there was one) to replace Spiro Agnew in the VP office. Once Agnew was gone and Ford was installed, Demonrats had no reason to avoid prompt impeachment. So long as Agnew was VP, the Demonrats were going to be quite reluctant to remove Nixon. He fed Agnew to the Demonrats and was himself the next item on their menu. Then Ford appointed Rockefeller himself as VP just in case we doubted the continuation of Ike's "Modern Republicanism." Charitably speaking, under Nixon and then Ford, government spenders lost no sleep worrying over losing their regular allowance increases.

You correctly credit Feckless Ford for pardoning Nixon. We had heard enough of Nixon for one lifetime and did not need a criminal trial. Then again, there was WIN: Whip Inflation Now! and some dairy product distribution program to subsidize farmers. Lett's not forget the tactics Ford used to barely postpone Ronaldus Maximus for four years and the fact that Ford gave us Carter, the toppling of the Shah, permanent Middle East troubles, whining in place of policy, giving away the Panama Canal, and being, until death overcomes him, a permanent antiAmerican foreign policy nuisance, and an ex-president who reflexively apologizes for every enemy of our country, and a buddy of Castro, of Ugo Chavez, of Ahmanutjob and a host of other international cretins.

Now, taking as Gospel truth every word you posted, you don't REALLY think that paleoPaulie could possibly reduce spending by the federals, do you??? First he would have to be nominated. You know that he never will be. Then he would have to be elected. That isn't happening either, as I suspect you know. If those two impossibilities were somehow achieved, anything he tried by way of spending money on anything other than our nation's defense, would be overturned by Congress. If he refused to spend money appropriated (impounding the funds), SCOTUS ruled back in Nixon's administration that impoundment is unconstitutional. I don't agree but my preferences on the subject or yours or paleoPaulie's mean nothing when SCOTUS almighty has ruled, as 50+ million slaughtered babies have found out the hard way since Roe vs. Wade.

Whatever you may think of moving the Berlin Wall to our Southwestern border areas, paleoPaulie was opposed to that twenty years ago when he was a more honest libertarian. Today, he just votes against appropriations to build a border fence while posing for holy pictures as though he wanted to close the border.

Whatever you may think of abortion or whatever paleoPaulie may yak yak interminably while posing for pro-life holy pictures, he refuses to DO anything federally about it. I don't care how many babies he delivered and I don't care what he thinks as a person. I care what he would DO as POTUS and the answer is he wouldn't do jackspit! Likewise as to marriage, the ordinary kind: one man, one woman, no household pets, no twelvesomes, no space aliens (whatever his curious imaginings as to the constitution).

All that Dr. Demento could possibly achieve as POTUS (which ain't gonna happen in any event) is surrendering everywhere, pulling American troops from everywhere, castrating the American military, ruining the chances to ban abortion and pervert marriage and permanently ruin the GOP by being more of a fool than Carter only in the name of the GOP. Consider Dr. Demento dismissed.

Note that I have not called YOU a single name.

That having been said, I see your proposal to abolish the Department of Education and I raise it to propose the absolute separation of school and state by abolishing each and every heathen ignorance factory known as a gummint skewel here in the entire 50 states and national territories. Then we can move on to abolish Energy Department, most welfare programs, HUD and a wide variety of other wastes of tax money and we should strive to abolish their state counterparts as well. But......

First, beef up the military, win the WOT dramatically and permanently (like, say, the Third Punic War), abolish abortion and protect marriage as noted above. Each takes priority over minimizing the size and scope of gummint. BTW, if you think bordermania is not going to cost you and everyone else their civil liberties, you are mistaken. That is not an insult. It is just the truth.

Nothing but nothing will get to the table via paleoPaulie. His presence in politics is an impediment to your agenda. The coupling of foreign/military policy cowardice with libertarianism does libertarianism no favors. We have learned our lessons on 12/7/41 and on 9/11/01 and we ain't going back.

Lead, follow or get out of the way.

How is the Paulistinian Dr. Demento doing in getting his treason weasel self actually nominated??? Any non-traitor could be nominated at a brokered convention. PaleoPaulie, as a paleopeacecreep, does not qualify and need not apply.

It's nice that you favor limited government and, who knows, maybe someday when we are not busy slaughtering our enemies, when the world is a safe place, when the lions have lain down peaceably with the lambs or in their graves (whatever!), when babies are not being slaughtered by the millions just for being babies, when Lance and Bruce know they need to live in another country to "marry", to utilize the nether end of the digestive system as though it were an organ of sexuality or enjoy the perks of marriage, when street crime is crushed and when the military is rebuilt to an unchallengeable strength, maybe we can start on lesser issues like reducing gummint in which case, end gummint skeweling first (not just the federal Department of Edjumakashun). Meanwhile, we have not reached the point where blunderbusses, sabers and letters of marque and reprisal can be substituted for High Frontier, death from the sky, nuclear boomer submarines, other real weapons and the restored Pentagon. Our figurative swords are not about to be beaten into plowshares. You may not care for the waging of war against those who have or would attack us but that is one of the very few legitimate excuses for government.

If you don't like that, then exile yourself into libertoonianism and stop hallucinating that you are anything vaguely resembling conservative.

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