Posted on 01/14/2008 8:04:27 PM PST by forkinsocket
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.
That's the common description of this very site in the mainstream media. If you parrot it against some other target, nobody here is going to pay the least bit of attention to you.
If that's the case then you should be pushing to reinstitute the draft so we can get our military adequately staffed and put bases in every country in the world.
Believe it or not it is ok to allow other countries to fight their own battles once in awhile. It is ok to allow other countries to make decisions you might not like.
Your worldview as expressed above leads to empire and America was not founded to become an empire.
Are you shooting for a Pax Americana?
History has proven this over and over and over...
How did the world ever get along without America on the world stage for all those centuries?
Ooops there I go being a war monger again...
Not so much war-mongering but you are advocating empire building. Empire building abroad leads to totalitarianism at home. It's not worth it in my view.
Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism. George Washington
It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.
George Washington
>>>And our defense entails more than our borders. Even my 5th grader understands by now after studying history, (during WW2), that once you have enemies literally at your doorstep on every side, eventually you’ll fold. Again, it would be really nice if the Euroweenies could figure it out. Some have: GB, Poland...but too many haven’t.
Yea, so we have to have our troops scattered in over 100 nations so another Hitler doesn't rise up and conquer us!
Amen.
>>>>>No, enemies hate freedom. Enemies find us, not the other way around.
Really?
Well, you don't have to go around the world making more!
[ Yea, in another 50 years, if the US survives that long. ]
>>>>If YOU were a South Korean you’d be happy if we waited out ill leader 500 years.
First, it is the South Koreans themselves who want to reunited with the North.
Even if the S.Korean was happy to wait 500 years, I am an American who is paying for it!
The best chance we have to NOT survive the next 50 years is plugging our head in the sand and pretending we’re the problem.
No, we will not survive the next 50 years is to think that we can solve every problem in the world and spend our way into being a 3rd rate nation.
Gee, after 5 years you would think that we would be finished!
For that matter, the war in Korea hasn’t been finished, the war in Europe hasn’t really been finished, which is the ENTIRE point!
Well, I guess to you neocons, no war is ever finished!
War is with us, always has been, always will be and no matter how many pretzels you contort yourself into, that simply won’t ever EVER change!
Yes, there will always be war, but the US doesn't have to be involved in them all.
We are not advocating pacifism, so stop setting up straw man arguments.
We are advocating minding our own business and let the various regions of the world handle their own problems.
>>>>You have no ability to learn from the past AND look to the future.
Which has nothing to do with our need to increase our defense budget.
>>>>>Projecting to cover your own shortcomings just doesn’t work. If the Soviets had no fear of us in conventional land warfare, why did they build all those tanks?
To conquer Western Europe and keep Eastern Europe under its rule.
They didn't build them because they were afraid of our conventional military which couldn't match theirs.
That is why if the Soviets did invade we would have had to use tactical nuclear weapons.
Now, go learn some history and stop bothering me with your silly posts.
>>>>”Can be defended” and “will be defended” is as absurd as buying debt and funding the WOT example. History shows time and time again allowing terrorists to build armies, take land, and terrorize populations leads to greater catastrophe. It would be really peachy if the U.N. did it’s job but it clearly doesn’t.
History also shows that nations most often collapse from overspending and overextending then from external enemies.
>>>>Hardly. Anyone with even a cursory sense of history knows that not only is China a threat being communist and is building a large military while the world sleeps, but they ALSO were actively involved in the Korean war! Again, what passes for history class in failed public schools these days is just sad.
now, China is not a threat to S.Korea!
You mean that same China that is funding the US by buying our debt is really our enemy!
Yes, China was involved in the Korean War, because we went up to the Yalu and the US was warned about getting too close to the Chinese border.
But McAruther underestimated the Chinese and overextended the U.S. forces so we got hammered by about 1 million Chinese which military intelligence didn't locate until too late.
So, the Chinese did not enter the Korean War to conquer S.Korea, they entered it to save N.Korea.
Your grasp of history is clearly very limited.
Will you still be impersonating a conservative and/or a Republican and/or an American patriot after we finish destroying the paleotreasonweasel and his little band of suckups???
Racism is not on the "right" nor is paleopeacecreepism, nor anti-Semitism, nor knee-jerk opposition to military efforts, nor a libertarian view that allows for baby-killing or rump-ranging at will or resists any effort to resist and defeat our Jihadist enemies. Don't you agree??? No peg is necessary when the indefensible is properly understood as totally alien to citizenship much less to the "right."
You are doing a terrific job here. God bless you and yours.
My grasp of history as a major in that subject got me a magna cum laude added to my BA. If you can say the same, you must have graduated from Patrice Lumumba University or some such place or, like TPanther noted, yours would also be reflective of the gummint edjumakashun ignorance factories known as gummint skewels.
Patton was right at the end of WWII. It should have continued by turning on the soviets when we had the blooded military available in Europe and MacArthur available with his forces in Asia to finish them off. Incidentally, the cold war and its expenditures would then not have been necessary. And we would probably had an easier time eliminating soviet stooge Mossagh Dagh (or however it is spelled) from controlling Iran since there would have been no soviets to prop him up.
Actually, MacArthur overestimated Hapless Harry Truman’s manhood.
Once again, paleoPaulie and his supporters are pantloads in the way of liberty.
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