“However, that doesn’t have anything to do with the Constitution Party as an organization, which, from the perspective of a serious activist, has grave problems as the vehicle for a paleo-rightist insurgency.”

Aw, Justin, you just said something really interesting and then ended the article. Have you written on this subject before, or is there an article you feel confident pointing your readers to? I’d love to hear more of your thoughts.

you’re a donkey

lol what can I say, no editing on this thing

What the conservative movement needs is a prophet. A figure like Goldwater that stands for a certain principles and can be someone to rally a new movement. Ron Paul got the edge and then stopped. Like Moses he couldn’t make it to the promised land. It took Joshua to carry forward the bloody work of invading and slaughtering the occupiers of the promised land. A new younger leader that can excite the masses as Reagan did.

Sarah Palin…

Durant,

A leader of Joshua’s caliber must have a brain.

I don’t see anything wrong with the Constitution Party platform as far as such go it is better than most I am sure.  It is clearly devoid of the political correct test for public office that the two major parties no doubt impose.  I see a lot of good in Nader and voted for him in the past two elections

Nader proposes a parliamentary form of government under which the representatives wold be apportioned in accordance to the percent of the vote that the party received in the prior presidential election.  Under such a system then the Constitution Party, if it managed 5% of the vote would then be granted 5% of the representatives.  If Congress had to work with a group that consisted of Greens, Libertarians, Constitution, and Conservative amon other then it wouldn’t be the complete rubber stamp socialist/corporate hosing that it is now.

And herein lies the problem. Most conservative-libertarians, as epitomized by the Constitution Party, want to get government out of the business of teaching morality (and who can blame them, given the low morals taught in the public schools and by the various branches of government). Libertarian libertarians want the free market to teach morals, and given the trash and sleaze that Capitalism is forever peddling in order to make a quick buck, no matter the social cost, I don’t think that’s a good idea, either. So how can the Christian morals that are the underpinnings of a functioning democracy, and were the underpinnings of the country as envisioned by the Founders, be maintained in the face of corrupting Leviathan and degenerating Capitalism without an explicitly Christian ethic? How about vouchers, redeemable at any school, including staunch religious ones.  Let the marketplace dictate the schools. My hunch is the most secular-atheist public schools will either shape up, or end up shutting down in under a decade.

M.Nucci, under the parliamentary system there are a few flaws. One, you don’t vote for the candidate, you vote for the party. Two, the parties have their MP’s on a short leash, they can control what they say and what they vote on (they can force them to vote a certain way), so no dissent within the ranks no opinions outside of the party platform.

Institutions don’t make people more virtuous, you can tinker with them but if the electorate, the MP’s, the representatives or the party leaders are corrupt there is no guarantee that they will respect the prescriptions and proscriptions institutions afford.

Our system works just fine on paper, there is just a lot of detritus of decades (even two centuries) of corruption from the two party stranglehold (though the parties change). In the meantime work on the American electorate and focus on congressional elections, then worry about the people at the top. You have to build a movement before you can change things (for the better), that whole proverb about the cart and horse comes to mind.

The Constitution Party was founded by Howard Phillips, leader of the Conservative Caucus… he had served in the Nixon administration as a director of the Office of Economic Opportunity,</I>

And in that capacity, his first official act was an attempt to eliminate the Office because there wes no Constitutional authority for it.

They don’t make men like Mr. Phillips anymore.

@Eric, and I see that as a good thing.  I mean the people who elect the party should be able to expect that the party they elected should vote the way they expect them to.  for example someone elected through the right to life party should be solid on abortion instead of following their personal whim.  The party may have to vote together but the beauty of it is that there is competition.  If people want candidates that vote a different way then they simply vote for another party.  In this way the people are more clearly represented.  In the system that we have now it may be that a neither of two candidates represents your personal political views and once elected the representatives can just serve their corporate masters and ignore those who voted them in.

On my ballot Ralph Nader is “Independent”.  Hmm, what movement is that?  It would only be a protest vote from the left, and a Constitution Party protest vote is a protest from the right.  I’m sorry the CP doesn’t have everything worked out to Raimondo’s satisfaction.  Ron Paul really isn’t much of a leader, is he?

Regarding proportional representation, some parties need to banished to the wilderness, at least once in a while, even if there are enough idiots around to vote for them.

Also, Nader is the only candidate that understands the abuses of corporate power...when “libertarians” knock “Big Government”, but defend big corporations as “free enterprise"--which are after all, extentions of the state---they undercut the entire concept of “free enterprise”, and curtail the appeal of their ideas to be mere rationale for oligarchy.

Businessman, especially the CEO clases and the Wall Street Bankers, are no opponents of “big government” as the recent events have proven.

By ignoring the reality of economic power of corporations, they shrink into a political economy that just proves that Marx and Lenin were right. Not good.

What the Evangelicals who wish to merge Christianity with the Government fail to either accept or realize is that the ONLY reason there is a vibrant and tolerant religious atmosphere in this country is specifically because the Framers wished to keep a government separate from organized religion. Religion will rue the day it jumped in bed with the idolatrous cur dogs of Big Government.

Those who disagree will always jump to the straw
man response that a person who holds this opinion is a Godless crank who wants to bar religious philosophy from government . No, I simply want the home and community...a self regulating, efficient and personal construct....to be the arbiter of religious philosophy and for those so inclined to freely bring the beneficial aspects of their creed to inform the public arena in a non governmental, non regulated, un-corrupted manner. 

Your government, gentle reader, perverts and disfigures everything it lays it’s hands on ...do you wish it to lend this reverse-Midas touch to your houses of worship?

Be very careful of what you wish for.

“After more than 300 years of de facto affirmative action to benefit white males, we definitely need affirmative action for people of color and women to offset enduring historic wrongs as well as present day inequalities.” ~ Ralph Nader’s Platform

http://www.votenader.org/issues/

And why should we be so evil as to try to make God a politician. Catholics were suppressed and suffered from Penal Laws because one group of heretics took power in Maryland and suppressed the Catholics and had little truck for the other heretics.

This was why Maryland was one of the leaders in getting government out of the religious domain. Something even the established religions recognized as good as it meant they had to compete in the open marketplace of ideas.

That didn’t prevent nidering fools from trying to force God into the Constitution since then. Taki’s remarks concerning the collapse of education and primarily critical thinking speaks volumes.

Despotism always crushes critical thinking. Be it reciting Mao’s Little Red Book or quoting from Revelation or being a Dittohead and punishing anyone that dares to question anything leads to the death of movements, nations and ultimately religion.

Thinking helps exercise your faith lest it become flaccid and stale. Be it faith in God or faith in a nation or a political party. Republicans gain the US Treasury and power and lost all faith.

Steven
Thanks for the chuckle. I read an article by a reporter in the Palin trail. She spoke of her with Godlike abilities, non-ideologue, photographic memory, warm and compassionate to all, Christlike but in a dress and stiletto heels, articulate and sharp as a tack with plenty of spunk. She also said she was a Democrat.

This either means that reporters that follow these slugs turn into fawning sycophants because I assume from drinking campaign Kool Aid, or the Democrats are hoping that Palin becomes the standard bearer.

Maybe were are biased because we see her record and interviews but as stupids as politicians are, whatever they ee as an advantage blows up in their face big time.

Nader seems to be a merger of left-libertarianism and prairie populism.

There’s nothing wrong with endorsing Ralph Nader because he’s what I like to call a
paleoliberal, someone who respects tradition (in this case progressive tradition)
and is against bigness in the form of corporations and corporate dominance of government.
In another era of time Nader would have been a La Follette Republican or Bryan Democrat,
one or the other.

Nader, I think, sees himself as akin to Eugene Debs and Norman Thomas, running as to
push one of the major parties in his direction. The fact that Dems have nominated a
candidate willing to mutter the words “spread the wealth” (Huey Long used to say this
too) and be critical of foreign trade deals shows his pushing has had its effect.

But as an independent candidacy, Naderism has its own built-in limitation, namely at some
point Ralph is going to be too old to be running for anything anymore and will have to
step aside. And then what? Without a party or movement to pass a legacy to, Nader’s
impact for the future as far as non-major politics is concerned is questionable at best.

Justin’s point about the sectarianism of the right’s non-major parties is dead-on: a
missed opportunity. It is in retrospect, too bad Paul was not still running, providing
an alternative to McCain/Obama (or is that Obama/McCain?). But the reasons for this are
not frivolous. In order to win his Congressional primary last March against neocon sock-puppet Chris
Peden, he had to assure his constitutents he would not continue to run for President
(although under Texas law he could). Peden no doubt would have beat such a run over Paul’s
head if he did not rule it out and it would have been a bigger disaster to see Paul’s
campaign result in the loss of his House seat. Plus, there’s no question that Paul’s last
non-major party run for the White House in 1988 left him scarred about the such an idea.
There’s also no question Paul’s GOP collegues would have denied him his seniority
and prevented him from becoming ranking member of the House Banking Committee if he had
gone ahead with a non-major party bid. Like it or not, Paul’s political decision making
is based in large part on his House seat and what he has to do to preserve it and his
Congressional seniority. That’s why Paul didn’t endorse primary challengers to corrupt
GOP Congressmen like Don Young, that’s why Paul won’t fully endorse Ron Paul Democrats
like South Carolina’s Bob Conley against Sen. Linday Graham. In fact it’s also the reason
why Paul spent the least amount of time of any GOP candidate then running in both Iowa and
New Hampshire, he couldn’t bring himself not to do his day job.

To get Constitutionalists and Libertarians to help out his campaign was great feat. To get
all four of the biggest players on the non-major party secene to endose his principals was
also impressive accomplishment as well. Paul is certainly a one-of-a-kind figure which
suffice to say is why his movement has divided itself into its respective non-major party
ghettos as he backed away from running. As Harold Meyerson said “Third parties divide
movements.” Bob Barr squandered the opportunity he had to make the LP a player in national
politics acting like an ass and openly feuding with Ron Paul. Rev. Baldwin and
party Chairman Jim Clymer, to their credit, have gone a long way to getting rid of the
sectarian divdes that have plagued the growth of the CP and yet those divides still
remain. But the brutal reality is that activists on the right simply have no interest in non-
major party politics in any numbers compared to those on the left. The minute Sarah
Palin was put on the GOP ticket any potential for big breakthroughs (although I think they’ll do better than
their 2004 numbers) by the LP and CP went up in smoke.

Ideally, Rep. Paul could have been drafted for the LP and CP nominations, perhaps have
gotten Nader to join with him on a joint independent ticket with the LP and CP using
their ballot lines for their own VP candidates and electors, and have used this foundation
to create new freedom party that sorely needed in this country. But as for the reasons
mentioned, Rep. Paul did not show that leadership and so now what we have is the Campaign
for Liberty, which may or may not be effective as a political action group. The CP and LP
can succeed on the local and state level but are simply too small to work nationally.
Ron Paul supporters do have an opportunity to help steer the GOP if McCain loses
but that remains to be seen. I appreciate that Rep. Paul wants his ideas to spread to
all parties, but if Paul isn’t willing to endorse of if the CFL isn’t willing to help
Ron Paul Democrats like Bob Conley, then none will materialize in the future. Either the
CFL becomes the basis of the new party, becomes an independent group like the Club for
Growth willing to help anybody that supports their platform or becomes the means to take
control of the GOP or at least have a great deal of influence. It would be very
difficult to be all three.

No, there was no problem in Justin endorsing Nader. I just wish he used a different
title to his post instead of the acursed question “What is to be Done?”

“This great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

More precisely, founded by Protestants on Protestant interpretations of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  I dare you guys to say it.

“they won’t join the Constitution Party if they happen to be Jews, agnostics, Christian Scientists, Swedenbogians, or out-and-out atheists.”

Well, I am an agnostic (and very pro-choice) and have voted for the Constitution Party (formerly U.S. Taxpayers party) in 3 of the last 4 elections (voted Buchanan in 2000).

The reason? Each time they were the only party to stand against affirmative racism and immigration.

Dear Mr. Raimondo, I’m calling you out from underneath the stench of the red herrings you are scattering before the eyes and noses of the folks who patronize this website.  Don’t get me wrong, I think you have something to say about the conspiracy that keeps America at war and in support of that outlaw state called Israel.  You do an excellent job keeping us apprised of this.  But as to this election, telling us you support Ralph Nader you reveal your true colors.  Tell us your support for Nader has nothing to do with your being a homosexual, and Ralph promotes it by supporting so-called homosexual marriage.  Tell us all, dear Justin, how the promulgation of a perversion of the natural law is good for America.  Pleeassse!!!

Actually, Justin, you will have nothing to worry about if that pathetic form of humanity, Obama, is elected, he supports so-called homosexual rights, too.  You’ve got it going both ways don’t you?

I’m glad I got all this voting crap out of my system when the Paul campaign tanked. The whole system is based on a flawed premise that renders the choosing of a President meaningless. The social contract is not valid. If individuals cannot initiate force to get what they want, then neither can the majority or the state.

You think you can reform the mafia by supporting Michael Corleone for Don?

What would be kool is if a lot of people do vote for Nader, and coincidently Obama loses, Nader will be SO hated. And we can all watch. Heh-heh. Fire!

I am voting for Baldwin. Though he gives no real evidence of understanding the evil of racial integration, he is at least the only candidate openly against immigration, which means - can we stop the euphamisms people?! - KEEPING AMERICA MAJORITY WHITE. That is the last and now only issue of legitimate conservative concern. As long as America remains majority, thee is a possibility of eventual conservative renewal. If we become majority-minority, all will be lost: the Right will never win on ANY of its issues, and our future will be one of increasing violence, poverty and social chaos.

Citizenship in the USA should be limited to Christians, defined as those who explicitly confess Trinitarianism and, at least, the Nicene Creed.

All others...no citizenship, no civil rights, and ultimately deportation.

That’s why I support the CP though that is not its platform.

No, sir, citizenship should be limited EXACTLY as the Founders intended: that is, to whites, though whether Christian or not is immaterial. Actually, it might be best to say “white Christians” but then to understand that latter word as meaning “nominal”. That way we could restrict Jewish admissions to our racial republic, but not alienate the many atheists among us - which would be in keeping with the Founders, among whom there numbered many merely nominal Christians, as well as Deists and agnostics.

I’m not religious and not born Christian, yet I think the Constitution party’s preamble is perfect:

“The Constitution of these United States provides that ‘no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.’ The Constitution Party supports the original intent of this language. Therefore, the Constitution Party calls on all those who love liberty and value their inherent rights to join with us in the pursuit of these goals and in the restoration of these founding principles.”

How can you compare that to Nader who supports unconstitutional federal government programs, a massive federal income tax, affirmative action, etc?

Sure, his gain, is the status-quo’s loss, but for the long term prosperity of America, it is constitutionalism/liberty that must be victorious.

@ Leon Haller,

Brilliantly said, sir.  I don’t know why we can’t frankly speak about remaining the majority in the country our ancestors built.  With the current demographic and political trends, we are looking at a third-world socialist USA in the not-so-distant future.  Paleocons have been infected by the PC bug and can see no evil/hear no evil/speak no evil as a result.  Sad.

OK Justin you make some good points here. I find the Evangelistic Zionist Baptist
warmongers as repugnant as you do. And the fact is that both Ron Paul and Chuck Baldwin
are baptists. But although I don’t ignore “associations” I am not totally guided by
them. I think Ron and Chuck are exceptions to the rule.

Fact is though as far as the original issue was concerned who to vote for? I won’t
be voting for Chuck Baldwin after all. You see, I live in Louisiana and Ron Paul is
on the ballot! Eat your heart out!!!!!!

And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerve in the brain of Jupiter. But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors.

-Thomas Jefferson 1823

The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.

-Thomas Jefferson 1814

In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.

-Thomas Jefferson 1814

Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus.”

-Thomas Jefferson 1816

Priests...dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions of the duperies on which they live.

-Thomas Jefferson 1820

It is between fifty and sixty years since I read it [the Apocalypse], and I then considered it merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherences of our own nightly dreams.

-Thomas Jefferson 1825

I’m supporting Chuck Baldwin in 2008 though I’m not a member of the Constitution Party.  However I did a bit of research on the CP and in fact they (or the “Baldwin wing” if you prefer) purged themselves of the sectarian Evangelicals who thought they could shut out other religions.

I wouldn’t take these “roll your own” theological tyros too seriously.  That platform preamble has an odd ring to the theologically literate.  “Jesus Christ creator and preserver of the United States”?  Isn’t that Sabellianism?  Not that, in the theological market place there is anything a priori wrong with Sabellianism...but is suspect with these CPer enthusiasts the moral-political tail is wagging the theological dog.

But then again, that’s how it should be, right?  I’m voting for Chuck Baldwin because he is intelligent, articulate, and has more integrity than any other candidate.  And because he was endorsed by Ron Paul.  I don’t agree with Baldwin’s theology, and now that the theocratic crowd has gotten the boot from Baldwin’s own faction, it doesn’t matter.

Thanks, Mr. Raimondo. You have saved me lots of time.  Nader is the only politician to whom I’ve ever given money, and when people ask, “why?” instead of explaining, I will now just send them your last two columns. It’s all in there.

@ Leon Haller

On the contrary, take your republic, your “Constitution”, and your vile racialism and shove them up your the collective arse of your freemasonic “founding fathers”!

WE PAPISTS WILL RESTORE A CATHOLIC MONARCHY TO THESE LANDS OF NORTH AMERICA...ONE DAY! AS IT WAS BEFORE JAMESTOWN SO TOO IT SHALL BE AGAIN!

To all the leftists who keep blogging here:

Is there something wrong now with wanting to keep America majority white? Please explain yourselves - and then in what ludicrous sense you can still be called ‘conservatives’.

And what’s an “oager”? It sounds Gaelic for “excrement”, though perhaps “cretin” or “buffoon” is the more likely translation ...

Seems to me that if the Constitutionalists want to “restore the Constitution” then their platform shouldn’t be at odds with the first amendment.  And while it may not be the party’s intent to make Christianity a state religion, it sure sounds like they wouldn’t put up much of a fight if someone pitched it.