Posted on 05/20/2015 6:41:13 AM PDT by wagglebee
PHILADELPHIA, PA, May 19, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Rand Paul wants to be president – but abortion is less of an issue for him than the national debt, the senator said yesterday.
Paul had completed a campaign stop at Philadelphia's National Constitution Center, where he attacked both Bill and Hillary Clinton with relish, when a local media personality asked him about abortion.
“I will answer the question as honestly as I can,” he said. “I didn’t run for office because of this issue. It wasn’t what got me to leave my practice” to enter politics.
Instead, it was the nation's ballooning debt that made the younger Paul run for the open Senate seat in Kentucky.
“I ran for office mainly because I became concerned that we’re going to destroy the country with debt – that we would borrow much money, that we would just destroy the currency,” he said.
The national debt has exploded from less than $1 trillion in 1980 to a staggering $18 trillion and climbing. President Obama, whose annual deficits have exceeded $1 trillion, has added more to the debt than every president from George Washington to Bill Clinton combined.
Pressed on abortion, Paul told the audience that, under the Constitution's federalist principles, abortion would be handled “best by the states.” Conservative jurists have debated whether the Constitution gives the federal government the right to regulate abortion.
To make national policy, the nation needs to decide “when life begins,” he said, according to The Daily Caller. “I think we go down all kinds of rabbit holes talking about other stuff.”
He referenced his own history as an ophthalmologist who treated premature newborns. “If someone were to hurt that one-pound baby in the neonatal nursery, it’s a problem. That baby has rights,” he said. “But we somewhat inconsistently say that seven-pound baby at birth or just before birth has no rights.”
His remarks echoed his rejoinder to a reporter last month to ask Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, “Is it OK to kill a seven-pound baby in the uterus?” Congresswoman Schultz replied that there should be no legal restrictions on late-term abortion. The Democratic Party platform currently calls for taxpayer-funded abortion through all nine months of pregnancy.
Deciding when Constitutional protections and the right to life apply is the key goal to advancing pro-life legislation, Paul said yesterday.
“We just have to figure when we agree life begins,” he concluded.
The first-term senator, who will also run for re-election in Kentucky next year, has a strong pro-life voting record – as strong as anyone can in a chamber where pro-life legislation was bottled by former Majority Leader Harry Reid until this year. In 2013, he introduced the Life Begins at Conception Act.
The previous year, he had been stopped by TSA agents while en route to address the annual March for Life. “I don’t think a civilization can long endure that does not have respect for all human life – born and not yet born,” he has said.
He has, however, said he supports the use of Plan B, a potentially abortifacient method of "emergency contraception," as birth control.
His concern over the proper role of the government under an originalist reading of the Constitution has caused Paul, an outspoken personal supporter of life and marriage, to question whether the government should withdraw from marriage contracts and establish alternate legal arrangements.
Framed by Independence Hall, Paul touted his libertarian credentials as someone who could attract unconventional support to the Republican ticket, including minorities who support his opposition to militarizing local police forces. Such opposition exploded in the city during riots in nearby Baltimore.
“I see no reason why a 20-ton mine resistant ambush protection vehicle should ever roll down any city in our country,” he said on Monday. “There is no reason that the police force should be the same as the army.”
Paul also stated he would oppose reauthorization of the Patriot Act, although he conceded the votes did not exist to impeded final passage.
He was particularly incensed over the NSA's broad interception of phone calls without a warrant.
“That's what we fought the Revolution over!” he said. "Our Founding Fathers would be appalled to know that we are writing one single warrant and collecting everyone's phone records all the time.”
To make national policy, the nation needs to decide “when life begins,” he said, according to The Daily Caller. “I think we go down all kinds of rabbit holes talking about other stuff.”
In other words, Rand Paul is pro-choice-by-state just like his father. He believes that the states can define ANYONE as a "non-person" and then kill them.
This is simply the libertarian version of, "I'm personally opposed, but..." mantra. It is designed to insure that the American Holocaust continues unabated.
The GOP in general seems to want to kick the social issues to the curb in order to focus on economics. Not a winning strategy IMHO.
Rand Paul is also not interested in stopping the invasion/cheap labor importation/colonization of our country.
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Money more important than murder.
Ping!
Can’t get the country’s fiscal life in order until its moral life is in order. Paul is a chip of the ol’ blockhead.
Jesus when tempted for 40 days in the wilderness, told the Devil: “Thou shalt not live by bread alone....”
Sadly, the GOP, the Chamber of Commerce and others in big business disagree.
It is good to have a starting point. He is a doctor not an economist.
Well, in case he doesn't know it, some if the debt is due to using Govt. money (ours) to pay for these abortions.
Very true. Unless and until we have leaders in government who are rock solid on moral issues, we will never get past the social and economic problems we face.
With Scott Walker emphasizing his issue (stop and reverse the invasion of the US, vote out Common Core on the local level etc) and Rand Paul brings restraint to federal and global banking outreach and a desire for less war-mongering, I could see it being a winning team.
The idiots who believe this don't seem to comprehend that murdering 60 MILLION CONSUMERS AND TAXPAYERS has an immediate and profound effect on the economy.
Throughout history nations have always been impacted by dramatic changes in population growth. The middle class was in large part created by the labor shortage brought on by the Black Death.
That came straight from Deuteronomy 8:3. Interestingly enough, the word translated “man” is Hebrew “Adam”.
Yet he should be in politics to stop Federal action or policy that sanctions or condones abortion
As a doctor, he ought to be closer to the abortion issue.
It’s bad to have the wrong starting point. Everything springs from family.
Consider the following:
A couple of years ago, on a FR forum related to current government abortion policy, "livius" posted: "This is worse than before. What we are now being forced to pay for is essentially a government funded and (as yet) indirectly government administered population control program." - liviusThat observation was and is pertinent to any discussion of the unbending coercive position "progressives" insist upon whenever the matter of "abortion" is discussed.
Writers have been exposing socialism's tyrannical principles and goals for a century now. Those who have understood it best declared that its policies lead to tyranny and oppression.
Yet, we have arrogant Americans, born in liberty, and viewing themselves as "intellectuals" and "progressives," who have embraced socialist ideas over the ideas of liberty and are determined to impose its deadly limitations on a once-free people.
As you read the following excerpt from the late-19th Century writer, note the writer's warning that the "scheme of socialism is wholly incomplete unless it includes the power of restraining the increase of population."
The following excerpt has been posted on FR previously; however, its conclusions are pertinent to this discussion:
From the Liberty Fund Library is "A Plea for Liberty: An Argument Against Socialism and Socialistic Legislation," edited by Thomas Mackay (1849 - 1912), originally published in 1891, Chapter 1, excerpted final paragraphs from Edward Stanley Robertson's essay:
"I have suggested that the scheme of Socialism is wholly incomplete unless it includes a power of restraining the increase of population, which power is so unwelcome to Englishmen that the very mention of it seems to require an apology. I have showed that in France, where restraints on multiplication have been adopted into the popular code of morals, there is discontent on the one hand at the slow rate of increase, while on the other, there is still a 'proletariat,' and Socialism is still a power in politics.
I.44
"I have put the question, how Socialism would treat the residuum of the working class and of all classes—the class, not specially vicious, nor even necessarily idle, but below the average in power of will and in steadiness of purpose. I have intimated that such persons, if they belong to the upper or middle classes, are kept straight by the fear of falling out of class, and in the working class by positive fear of want. But since Socialism purposes to eliminate the fear of want, and since under Socialism the hierarchy of classes will either not exist at all or be wholly transformed, there remains for such persons no motive at all except physical coercion. Are we to imprison or flog all the 'ne'er-do-wells'?
I.45
"I began this paper by pointing out that there are inequalities and anomalies in the material world, some of which, like the obliquity of the ecliptic and the consequent inequality of the day's length, cannot be redressed at all. Others, like the caprices of sunshine and rainfall in different climates, can be mitigated, but must on the whole be endured. I am very far from asserting that the inequalities and anomalies of human society are strictly parallel with those of material nature. I fully admit that we are under an obligation to control nature so far as we can. But I think I have shown that the Socialist scheme cannot be relied upon to control nature, because it refuses to obey her. Socialism attempts to vanquish nature by a front attack. Individualism, on the contrary, is the recognition, in social politics, that nature has a beneficent as well as a malignant side. The struggle for life provides for the various wants of the human race, in somewhat the same way as the climatic struggle of the elements provides for vegetable and animal life—imperfectly, that is, and in a manner strongly marked by inequalities and anomalies. By taking advantage of prevalent tendencies, it is possible to mitigate these anomalies and inequalities, but all experience shows that it is impossible to do away with them. All history, moreover, is the record of the triumph of Individualism over something which was virtually Socialism or Collectivism, though not called by that name. In early days, and even at this day under archaic civilisations, the note of social life is the absence of freedom. But under every progressive civilisation, freedom has made decisive strides—broadened down, as the poet says, from precedent to precedent. And it has been rightly and naturally so.
I.46
"Freedom is the most valuable of all human possessions, next after life itself. It is more valuable, in a manner, than even health. No human agency can secure health; but good laws, justly administered, can and do secure freedom. Freedom, indeed, is almost the only thing that law can secure. Law cannot secure equality, nor can it secure prosperity. In the direction of equality, all that law can do is to secure fair play, which is equality of rights but is not equality of conditions. In the direction of prosperity, all that law can do is to keep the road open. That is the Quintessence of Individualism, and it may fairly challenge comparison with that Quintessence of Socialism we have been discussing. Socialism, disguise it how we may, is the negation of Freedom. That it is so, and that it is also a scheme not capable of producing even material comfort in exchange for the abnegations of Freedom, I think the foregoing considerations amply prove." EDWARD STANLEY ROBERTSON
All I can say is most of the voters in my area espouse Democrat “blue model” Socialist economics. When they vote Conservative it is basically due to one of three issues:
1) Gun rights
2) Abortion
3) Gay Marriage and related issues
If the GOP punts on all of those, they’ll have no reason whatsoever not to vote for the Democrat.
He really has the heart of a libertarian. Combine that with what appears to me to be an overweening ambition, and you have a recipe for a RINO sellout.
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