COMING POLICE STATE

[NOTE: This text was first published in the March 7, 1997 newsletter. It was an important message in 1997, but seems even more important today.]

Last week we gave Rep. Ron Paul's toll-free Legislative Update number (1-888-322-1414) and suggested that readers listen to his message "The Coming Police State." We were told by a lot of people that they missed it.

Originally, that message was part of a one hour speech Rep. Paul made on the floor of the House. And, thanks to Jeff in Michigan, we have the complete text. Below is the shortened version of Rep. Paul's speech recorded as the "Legislative Update:"

Centralizing power and consistently expanding the role of the Government requires an army of bureaucrats and a taxing authority upon which a police state thrives. There are over 100 laws on the books permitting private property seizure without due process of law. We have made it easy to seize any property by absurdly claiming the property itself committed the crime. The RICO mentality relating to law enforcement permits even the casual bystander to suffer severely from the police state mentality.

The drug war hysteria and the war on gun ownership started by Roosevelt in 1934 have expanded Federal police power to the point that more than 10 percent of all of our police are Federal. The Constitution names but three Federal crimes, so where is the justification? Talk about swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance. We have hovering over us daily the Federal police from the EPA, OSHA, FBI, CIA, DEA, EEOC, ADA, F&WL, INS, BATF, and worst of all, the IRS. Even criticizing the IRS makes me cringe that it might precipitate an audit. It seems that all administrations, to some degree, used the power of the agencies to reward or punish financial backers or political enemies.

So much [of] that had its origin in the 1930's, it was then that the FBI's role changed from friendly investigator helping local authorities to that of national police force.

We live in an age where the fear of an IRS registered letter bearing news of an audit surpasses the fear of a street mugging. The police are supposed to be our friend and the Federal Government the guarantor of our liberties. Ask the blacks in the inner city of Los Angeles if they trust the police and revere the FBI and the CIA. We should not have to cringe when a Federal agent appears at the door of our business. We should not even see them there.

A Congress sworn to uphold the Constitution ought to be protecting our right to our property, not confiscating it. Congress ought to protect our right to own a weapon of self-defense, not systematically and viciously attacking that right.

Congress ought to guarantee all voluntary association, not regulate and dictate every economic transaction. We should not allow Congress to give credence to inane politically correct rules generated by egalitarian misfits. Setting quotas ought to insult each of us.

We need no more centralized police efforts. We need no more wiretaps that have become epidemic in this last decade. We have had enough Wacos and Ruby Ridges.

Pacifism was a leftwing inspired response to the horrors of the First World War. It was a cultural movement, and an aesthic but unless you have an example otherwise, it was never a government policy anywhere or anytime.

No American libertarian is a pacifist. To the man, a libertarian believes in the Jewish law of self-defense, or are simply, in an Enlightment Era rights system, a Second Amendment abosulist. The result is the same; if someone comes to kill you brother, kill him.

Thomas Jefferson, oh boy now you are tredding thin water, was an Anti-Federalist who signed the Consitution. The real anti-Federalists considered Jefferson a sell-out. Jefferson was not a classical liberal which was a movement of the late 1800s.

Jefferson did strongly represent a political group that resembles todays paleo-libertarians and paleo-conservatives, however, he was not ideologically, 'on the team.'

Jefferson was not a classical liberal which was a movement of the late 1800s.

The father of classical liberalism is considered by some to be Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). A motivating force behind CL was the desire to strip the oppressive influence of the Church from the political system.

Jefferson certainly believed in such independence, but he did not buy into the notion that "ultimate good" was defined by man (the State), and was no longer the province of faith, or God.

The conservatives of the era certainly were motivated by powerful religious beliefs and doctrines, and felt it would be impossible to strip "God" out of the government.

Thus the beautiful compromise of the American government which acknowledges that rights are God given but are held and defended strictly by the individual citizen and not by government offices.

(I detract..)

I will address some of your other points in your post when I have more time. (I haven't much begun with a comparison of Jeffersonian versus Hobbesian classical liberalism. Definitions change over time...etc)

I the real point I was trying to get at is that Jefferson was considered a sell-out to his cause. American culture has always exhibited a balance between 'conservative' and 'liberal' forces for a variety of different agendas, some ideological, come economical (see the merchant class of Boston versus the Southern Agrarian aristocracy.)

The real question was, radical localism versus a central state. The issue was never really decided in debate but in a cout detat called the Consitution. Jefferson was branded a sell-out by the radical localists (heirs to the Old Right (paleo-libertarian, paleo-conservativism) tradition in modern thought to the Hamiltonian view of a centralized state with a common culture. Both have elements that make up modern conservative thought, very little makes up modern liberal thought, thus paleo-libertarians find common cause with paleo-conservatives.

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