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I seriously want to know which of Ron Paulīs ideas are crazy. I read a lot of empty assertions in the media that Ron Paulīs ideas are fringe, nutty, or kooky. I couldnīt disagree more, but itīs hard to say because those terms don't really mean anything and the press ainīt exactly full of rhetorical geniuses.
To me, it seems that Paulīs platform is the genuine position of anyone who subscribes to an individualist ethos. Sure, plenty of politicians claim to believe in individualism, but they jump into a collectivist perspective as soon as they get a question from the media. In contrast, Paulīs positions strike me as the natural consequence of anyone who believes in the Lockean theory of self-governance upon which our Constitution was more-or-less predicated. From that theory, almost directly, issues libertarianism/conservatism
So here is my simplified breakdown: Individuals have a right to do anything they want so long as they donīt infringe on the rights of others and they keep their agreements (contracts). Through those agreements, they can abrogate their rights to other people and they can create entities like states or corporations. They agree to charters to create states that will abrogate some of their rights for the purpose of protecting civil rights through their legislative and executive functions and enforcing contracts through their judiciary functions. In turn, those states contract to create a Constitution to bind them all.
The problem is that the Federal Government is far removed from the self-governing individual. Worse, democratic decisions by the federal government yield larger groups of disenfranchised minorities (in the numerical sense) than do the states or local governments. This is already abhorrent to the individualist who would prefer the consensual (albeit, impossible) government to the democratic model. So in enforcing the Constitution, the libertarian believes the best way to protect the minority is to limit what the majority can do. Thus, the conservative is born.
The conservative believes in a devolutionary federal system because that submits decisions to abrogate rights back to the states where individuals get more purchase. "Sure" the Conservative says, "the Federal Government can use its power to do good, but the process of removing the power from the states breeds corruption". And he is right. The same type of Constitutional circumvention that gave us the New Deal, now gives us the Iraq War, surreptitious entry into your private business, and commits Americans to years of overwhelming debt. You see, you can give the government power, but you cannot always control who will harness the power. And when the wrong President gets in charge or a Congress that is spineless in his/her presence, you get a certain kind of runaway government that the people who ratified the Constitution, and thereby created that government, are helpless to control. It's all well-and-good when the left uses it to grant social programs, but now the right has abandoned conservatism in order to harness that power too. Paulīs position, the real conservative position, is that strict adherence to the Constitution, the very contract that creates the government, is the best measure for the government to protect the citizens from itself.
Whatīs that you say? The Federal Government needs to perform some functions that are not enumerated in the Constitution? The conservative will tell you that you should amend it. "Thatīs too hard", some say, "we need a supermajority". No, they're being lazy or misdirected. First, the supermajority is required because if youīre going to add to the powers of the Constitution and thereby stymie rights, you had better come correct and get more than a measly fifty percent of the population to agree. Second, that impression doesnīt explain the 18th and 21st Amendments, which were ratified to prohibit alcohol, and then to repeal the prohibition, respectively. Sorry folks, but if the Constitution was that hard to amend, we wouldnīt have amended it to prohibit liquor, of all things.
Most important, it seems that our hesitance about the Constitutional Amendment process stems from conditioning. Senators and Congressmen have no interest in amending the Constitution because Amendments tend to settle disputes, put the people in power, and tell the government what to do. The Congress would prefer that we donate to congressional campaigns and it promises to fight our fights in Washington D.C. But few congressman have any incentive to win! Once they do, the money disappears and they lose a core cause. Theyīre better off winning battles and losing wars, even if weīre better off winning both.
Among other reasons, that is why Congress refuses to direct citizens toward the Constitutional Amendment process. The founders anticipated this and therefore gave states the right to amend the Constitution by themselves. This is obviously a better system. By disaggregating power away from Washington D.C., special interests canīt get a strong foothold in enough states. Even better, state representatives tend to have term limits and tend to live in close proximity of the citizens that they might enrage with bad or corrupt decisions. In contrast, when we centralize power on Capitol Hill we put all the influence in a nice little box for such organizations as the Military Industrial Complex to unwrap. And thatīs where we are today.
Now, Paulīs positions issue directly from the Constitution. He opposes the Federal Reserve because it is secret and unapproachable. Who can blame him? When did we allow our states to allow our government to allow an independent organization to run our economy? And why canīt we audit it? Isnīt that a little too removed from the control of the people? Why do we commit Americans to war without bothering to declare one? Why do we allow Congress to give away $30,000 medals to dead people, purchased with our tax money? Why do we allow the government to sell our Social Security to China or to spy in our computers without warrant? We almost impeached Nixon for less, but now we stand by as the very entity we created runs rough-shot over the orders we gave it. We donīt let corporations operate so far outside of their bylaws or articles of incorporation. We donīt interpret contracts among individuals as 'living documents'. Yet weīve allow the government to turn the Social Security Trust into the bureaucratic version of the Enron Corporation and interpret its very license to exist however it deems important.
Someone, please write to me and tell me how I am wrong. I will not post your name unless you tell me to. Tell me how Paul is wrong. Of course, I don't expect you to back up such exaggerated terms as 'kooky'. I just need to hear a single coherent rebuttal or explanation. Please ensure you understand Paulīs positions. For example, I donīt want to hear about how Paul wants to return to the gold standard because he doesnīt. Here is the Wikipedia entry for Paulīs platform: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Ron_Paul
Finally, in response to a previous readersī question about why I donīt support Rudolph Giuliani: I donīt support Giuliani because (a) I donīt vote for neo-conservatives who seem more dangerous than Democrats (Iīd rather go broke with sweet social programs than go broke with a foreign war) and (b) I am a man, as opposed to a frightened child who needs protection from spooky terrorists.
To me, it seems that Paulīs platform is the genuine position of anyone who subscribes to an individualist ethos. Sure, plenty of politicians claim to believe in individualism, but they jump into a collectivist perspective as soon as they get a question from the media. In contrast, Paulīs positions strike me as the natural consequence of anyone who believes in the Lockean theory of self-governance upon which our Constitution was more-or-less predicated. From that theory, almost directly, issues libertarianism/conservatism
So here is my simplified breakdown: Individuals have a right to do anything they want so long as they donīt infringe on the rights of others and they keep their agreements (contracts). Through those agreements, they can abrogate their rights to other people and they can create entities like states or corporations. They agree to charters to create states that will abrogate some of their rights for the purpose of protecting civil rights through their legislative and executive functions and enforcing contracts through their judiciary functions. In turn, those states contract to create a Constitution to bind them all.
The problem is that the Federal Government is far removed from the self-governing individual. Worse, democratic decisions by the federal government yield larger groups of disenfranchised minorities (in the numerical sense) than do the states or local governments. This is already abhorrent to the individualist who would prefer the consensual (albeit, impossible) government to the democratic model. So in enforcing the Constitution, the libertarian believes the best way to protect the minority is to limit what the majority can do. Thus, the conservative is born.
The conservative believes in a devolutionary federal system because that submits decisions to abrogate rights back to the states where individuals get more purchase. "Sure" the Conservative says, "the Federal Government can use its power to do good, but the process of removing the power from the states breeds corruption". And he is right. The same type of Constitutional circumvention that gave us the New Deal, now gives us the Iraq War, surreptitious entry into your private business, and commits Americans to years of overwhelming debt. You see, you can give the government power, but you cannot always control who will harness the power. And when the wrong President gets in charge or a Congress that is spineless in his/her presence, you get a certain kind of runaway government that the people who ratified the Constitution, and thereby created that government, are helpless to control. It's all well-and-good when the left uses it to grant social programs, but now the right has abandoned conservatism in order to harness that power too. Paulīs position, the real conservative position, is that strict adherence to the Constitution, the very contract that creates the government, is the best measure for the government to protect the citizens from itself.
Whatīs that you say? The Federal Government needs to perform some functions that are not enumerated in the Constitution? The conservative will tell you that you should amend it. "Thatīs too hard", some say, "we need a supermajority". No, they're being lazy or misdirected. First, the supermajority is required because if youīre going to add to the powers of the Constitution and thereby stymie rights, you had better come correct and get more than a measly fifty percent of the population to agree. Second, that impression doesnīt explain the 18th and 21st Amendments, which were ratified to prohibit alcohol, and then to repeal the prohibition, respectively. Sorry folks, but if the Constitution was that hard to amend, we wouldnīt have amended it to prohibit liquor, of all things.
Most important, it seems that our hesitance about the Constitutional Amendment process stems from conditioning. Senators and Congressmen have no interest in amending the Constitution because Amendments tend to settle disputes, put the people in power, and tell the government what to do. The Congress would prefer that we donate to congressional campaigns and it promises to fight our fights in Washington D.C. But few congressman have any incentive to win! Once they do, the money disappears and they lose a core cause. Theyīre better off winning battles and losing wars, even if weīre better off winning both.
Among other reasons, that is why Congress refuses to direct citizens toward the Constitutional Amendment process. The founders anticipated this and therefore gave states the right to amend the Constitution by themselves. This is obviously a better system. By disaggregating power away from Washington D.C., special interests canīt get a strong foothold in enough states. Even better, state representatives tend to have term limits and tend to live in close proximity of the citizens that they might enrage with bad or corrupt decisions. In contrast, when we centralize power on Capitol Hill we put all the influence in a nice little box for such organizations as the Military Industrial Complex to unwrap. And thatīs where we are today.
Now, Paulīs positions issue directly from the Constitution. He opposes the Federal Reserve because it is secret and unapproachable. Who can blame him? When did we allow our states to allow our government to allow an independent organization to run our economy? And why canīt we audit it? Isnīt that a little too removed from the control of the people? Why do we commit Americans to war without bothering to declare one? Why do we allow Congress to give away $30,000 medals to dead people, purchased with our tax money? Why do we allow the government to sell our Social Security to China or to spy in our computers without warrant? We almost impeached Nixon for less, but now we stand by as the very entity we created runs rough-shot over the orders we gave it. We donīt let corporations operate so far outside of their bylaws or articles of incorporation. We donīt interpret contracts among individuals as 'living documents'. Yet weīve allow the government to turn the Social Security Trust into the bureaucratic version of the Enron Corporation and interpret its very license to exist however it deems important.
Someone, please write to me and tell me how I am wrong. I will not post your name unless you tell me to. Tell me how Paul is wrong. Of course, I don't expect you to back up such exaggerated terms as 'kooky'. I just need to hear a single coherent rebuttal or explanation. Please ensure you understand Paulīs positions. For example, I donīt want to hear about how Paul wants to return to the gold standard because he doesnīt. Here is the Wikipedia entry for Paulīs platform: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Ron_Paul
Finally, in response to a previous readersī question about why I donīt support Rudolph Giuliani: I donīt support Giuliani because (a) I donīt vote for neo-conservatives who seem more dangerous than Democrats (Iīd rather go broke with sweet social programs than go broke with a foreign war) and (b) I am a man, as opposed to a frightened child who needs protection from spooky terrorists.
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