_med.jpg)
You Say You Want a Revolution?
Under Consideration: Ron Paul, The Revolution: A Manifesto, Grand Central Publishing (2008), 173 pages.
John Quincy Adams, whose wise counsel about America going “not abroad in search of monsters to destroy” is naturally quoted in Ron Paul’s post-campaign manifesto, The Revolution, also provided what may, on some (distant, we may hope) day, be the epitaph on Representative Paul’s congressional career: “Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.”
Ron Paul votes alone and has done so for almost 10 terms now. Most men, faced with such vocational isolation, would have given in to despair or booze or golf long ago. Paul’s irrepressibility is a marvel. Yet how stunned he must have been when in late 2007, midway through what appeared to be a quixotic campaign for the GOP presidential nomination, running as that curious thing, an antiwar Republican, he attracted SRO crowds and shattered records for internet fund-raising. The solitary man had tossed his message in a bottle out onto a wave, and back came tens of thousands of replies.
Votes? Well, that was another story, though he showed well in several caucus states in the libertarian West, and he has a following in the rural Northeast and upper Midwest, too.
Young people especially responded to Paul’s brand of plainspoken, no-bullshit libertarianism. He has that “educating for liberty” style that I associate with the 1950s-’60s-era Foundation for Economic Education and its monthly The Freeman, upon which many a young libertarian cut his eyeteeth reading gentle homilies about the harmonies of free exchange and the impossibility of socialist planning. Those go-go-Goldwater kids devouring The Freeman grew up to form the core of the Reagan doctrinaires. Well, no one ever said they had good judgement. It’s hard to stay sharp when you’ve OD’d on Leonard Read.
Goldwater to Reagan to Paul: one generation got old, one generation got sold, and now Ron Paul has given his volunteers of America this “long-term manifesto based on ideas, and perhaps some short-term marching orders.”
The Revolution is what the blurbists used to call a runaway bestseller. It is simply impossible to imagine another also-ran achieving such success in his campaign’s afterglow. (The Pensees of Joe Biden?)
Paul had long been a fixture of the hard-money libertarian right, but the response to his message seems to have extended his vision. He (and the uncredited aides who I assume helped him write the book) describes those who rallied to his banner as “Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Greens, constitutionalists, whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asian-Americans, antiwar activists, homeschoolers, religious conservatives, freethinkers.” (Why, one wonders, omit Libertarians?) Despite their differences, “these folks typically found, to their surprise, that they rather liked each other.”
Of course. Why shouldn’t a homeschooling organic-farming family be welcome in—be exemplars of—a coalition for peace and liberty?
Paul writes hopefully of a left-right alliance that bypasses the grifters and grafters who have clawed their way into positions as supposititious “leaders” always ready to sell out for thirty pieces of foundation silver. “Liberals at the grass roots ... have been deeply alienated by the various betrayals by which a movement they once supported has made its peace with the establishment,” he asserts. Where are the courageous McGoverns and McCarthys of today’s liberal Democracy who will stand with Ron Paul against “undeclared wars without end, more and more police-state measures, and a Constitution that may as well not exist”? He invokes the shade of the late Idaho Democrat Frank Church on the dangers of government surveillance, and Church, whatever his flaws, was a pro-gun Westerner who saw himself as in some sense an heir of the great populist Sen. William Borah. Compare Senator Church with current Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions, whom Paul quotes as remarking, “Some people in this chamber love the Constitution more than they love the safety of this nation. We should all send President Bush a letter thanking him for protecting us.”
What a dipshit.
Any candidate who wanders from the imperial reservation eventually bumps into the invisible fence of American political discourse. As Paul writes, “Dissenters who tell their fellow citizens what is really going on are subject to smear campaigns that, like clockwork, are aimed at the political heretic. Truth is treason in the empire of lies.”
Paul, it must admitted, gave the “smearbund” an opening via what appears to be the only significant lapse in judgement in his career: his (probably absentee) editorship of a newsletter in which stupid and/or offensive racial jokes occasionally appeared in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Paul is fallible. He made a mistake. But the gravity of this error pales in comparison to supporting the obscene Iraq War, as did every one of his opponents for the Republican nomination.
(Paul makes no reference to the newsletters in The Revolution, though he does say that racism is “a disorder of the heart” and “a particularly odious form of collectivism whereby individuals are treated not on their merits but on the basis of group identity.”)
The Revolution is an able libertarian primer based on Paul’s credo that “individuals have a right to life and liberty and that physical aggression should be used only defensively.” The programmatic expression thereof, according to Paul, is “liberty, self-government, the Constitution, and a noninterventionist foreign policy.” He makes no effort to camouflage the radicalism of his views: The draft is “totalitarian.” The federal drug war has “dangerous and undesirable domestic consequences” and should be called off. Given his druthers, the cabinet would be shrunk to the triad of the departments of State, Defense, and Justice. All other governmental functions would be returned to the states and the people.
In the section on economics, he invokes the laissez-faire pantheon: Bastiat, Hayek, Mises, Nozick, Chodorov, Friedman. He outlines a voluntaristic alternative to the dole, scorning “the soul-killing logic of the welfare state: somebody else is doing it for me. I don’t need to give of myself, since a few scribbles on a tax form fulfill my responsibility toward my fellow man.” He also discourses at length on the monetary question, a subject on which I am so abysmally ignorant that I could pass for a Fox News anchor.
He’s just “following the Constitution,” Ron Paul says in his aw-shucks manner--which is “the one option Americans are never permitted to hear.”
Indeed, the barrenness of American political discussion was thrown into relief by Paul’s presence in the debates. He would speak in the lost language of constitutionalism, and the McCains and Giulianis would look at him as though he had just announced that he was from Uranus. The snickers, the rolling of eyes—one almost expected a Cuckoo’s Nest-ian orderly to walk onto the stage and wrap Congressman Paul in a straitjacket. None of his opponents would have protested. The price of freedom, as Gore Vidal says, is eternal discretion.
The narrowness of a political realm whose limits are demarcated by Arthur Schlesinger’s ghost and Bill Bennett’s ghostwriter galls Paul. “For heaven’s sake,” he asks, “what kind of debate is it in which all sides agree that America needs troops in 130 countries?”
Paul quotes George Washington—“Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground?”—as well as Jefferson’s inaugural address commending to his countrymen, “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.”
He denies that this advice is obsolete, for “the principles enshrined in the Constitution do not change.” No foreign aid, no interference in the affairs of other nations, no conscription, no entangling alliances, trade and cultural exchanges with all nations, a drastically reduced defense budget that is actually applied to the defense of our country: this is the Paulian foreign policy.
He praises Senator Robert A. Taft, the digging up of whose body is a capital crime in the capital. He calls himself a Taft Republican, which is a cousin-german to a Grover Cleveland Democrat—both endangered species in an age overrun by the Limbaugh-O’Reilly “conservatives” who have pullulated like triffids.
Paul refuses to give up on his party, and as a lifelong Democrat who am I to criticize him for that? He emphasizes his conservative lineage, quoting Russell Kirk, Felix Morley, Robert Nisbet, and Richard Weaver, and noting that the “most significant traditional conservatives in the postwar period were all wary of militarism to one degree or another.”
Alas, the “conservative movement,” once a hodgepodge containing men of learning and character like Kirk and Nisbet as well as the gaggle of (“ex”) Trotskyists and Stalinists out to slay the god that failed (and slay the American republic, too), “now tolerates and even encourages anti-intellectualism and jingoism that would have embarrassed earlier generations of conservative thinkers.” What can be done with such a movement other than pitching a last shovelful of dirt over the corpse, mumbling a few prayers, and walking into the sunlight?
As for the word “isolationist,” which I’ve always thought had a nice pacific ring to it, Rep. Paul gives taxonomic reversal the old college try. He tags the unilateral bullies of the Bush administration “isolationists” and avers, “I favor the very opposite of isolation: diplomacy, free trade, and freedom of travel.” And ‘tis true that the “isolationist” Paul was the only GOP presidential hopeful to support lifting sanctions against Cuba.
He fires off this nice line: “Mine is an ‘isolationist’ position only to those who believe that the world’s peoples can interact with each other only through their governments, or only through the intermediary of a supranational bureaucracy.”
There isn’t much in this book about the campaign. Paul may have inspired a nascent revolution but he is hardly a presence in The Revolution. He doesn’t tell stories from the trail; he doesn’t crack jokes. The most memorable personal tale he tells is of watching in horror as a medical resident at the University of Pittsburgh in the mid-’60s, when a six-month-old aborted fetus was dumped “in a bucket in the corner of the room. The baby tried to breathe, and tried to cry, and everyone in the room pretended the baby wasn’t there.”
Paul is a pro-life federalist. That is, he is a constitutionalist who would return the question of the legality of abortion and drugs and gay marriage and other vexatious social issues to the states. Federalism is the plank on which a left-right anti-imperialist alliance could balance. Will it work? I’ll get back to you after California legalizes dope and Louisiana bans abortion.
When, in the run up to Iraq War II, Representative Paul proposed that the Congress at least observe Article I, Section 8 and make a formal declaration of war, House International Relations Committee chairman Henry Hyde (R-IL) responded, “There are things in the Constitution that have been overtaken by events, by time. Declaration of war is one of them. There are things no longer relevant to a modern society. We are saying to the president, use your judgment. [What you have proposed is] inappropriate, anachronistic; it isn’t done any more.”
Hyde was laureled; Paul is libeled. He must feel sometimes like Charlton Heston being mocked and snorted over by the smug simians in “Planet of the Apes.”
His capacity for remaining undiscouraged is extraordinary. Talk about audacious hope: Ron Paul thinks the republic is salvageable. “We have not had a foreign policy that is proper to a republic for many, many years, and it is long past time that we reestablished one,” he says. Amen, brother.
What a shame this man will not be elected president.
Bill Kauffman’s Ain’t My America: The Long, Noble History of Antiwar Conservatism and Middle American Anti-Imperialism has just been released by Holt/Metropolitan.
Comments
Amen to this article! A very good write up and spot on!
Click to flag this comment as abusive
It is an irony of our time that someone who holds Ron Paul’s view is now looked
upon as an “extremist’ and a “fascist,” in contrast to those who ordered the
incineration of Central European cities and the fire bombing of Tokyo, who are still
praised as principled “democrats.” Actually I think we should go with the semantic
revolution. When we refer to overweight avoiders of danger, who
incite wars for others to die in, we should unhesitatingly refer to them as ‘democrats.”
Click to flag this comment as abusive
“What a shame this man will not be elected president.”
It is indeed, but for those of us who tried, knowing we were right, more right than we’ve ever been about anything else in our political lives, is actually more satisfying than I would have thought.
A clear conscience is a wonderful thing.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
I posted this elsewhere, but it seems more germane here.
A growing trend I see on this website is the support or condemnation of a presidential candidate based on single issue politics. For some it is the war in Iraq, for others it is whether or not a candidate will relegate the interests of Israel beneath the United States, and for others still, it is trade policy or abortion. I must admit that my own proclivities are leading me to vote for the candidate who is most likely to be tough on immigration.
Regardless of how you order the importance of these issues, it should give us all great sadness that there is no true candidate who stands for a multiplicity of the issues paleoconservatives tend to care about. I say true candidate because Ron Paul was never a real contender, and unlike some of the pundits on here, I do not hold the media entirely responsible for his inability to win a primary election. Ron Paul is an intelligent man and his intentions are always honorable, but he is not an articulate or charismatic leader capable of captivating the interest of the common man. Scroll through Youtube and you will see countless videos that cherry pick many of the brilliant remarks he made during the debates. However, every time I watched the debates in their entirety, Dr. Paul failed to deliver with the consistency of a talented and confident politician. He squirmed around on stage and often tripped over his own words. Many of the remarks he made were put together poorly. They may have made sense to me because I am familiar with paleoconservative literature, but for the common “nine to five” guy who comes home after work, cracks open a beer and usually watches the ballgame, many of Ron Paul’s answers probably seemed like gibberish. The inability of Dr. Paul to articulate his ideas concisely, precisely and coherently gave him a limited appeal to the masses. Do not misunderstand me. I begrudge Ron Paul nothing and I am grateful for all that he has done. Dr. Paul has, in fact, done more for the conservative movement than any leader since Pat Buchanan and his recent performance in Pennsylvania, 15.9%, was encouraging. However, Mr. Paul is not the man we are looking for. To galvanize the populous base we need a charming, well-spoken, charismatic, intelligent front man. In other words, we need an Obama of our own.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
“To galvanize the populous base we need a charming, well-spoken, charismatic, intelligent front man. In other words, we need an Obama of our own.”
I propose that our ‘front man’ must, first and foremost, be a man of principle, character, and hold an unwaivering belief in the importance of the Constitution. Only then should the issue of charisma and electability be entertained and only if we should be so lucky as to have two contenders who share the primary characteristics.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
So if Mitt Romney just had the rhetoric, Mike would have voted for him. See, it doesn’t matter who really stands for something, he has to be a slick politician.
Never mind the fact that when you’re the lone voice for freedom and a Constitutional Republic on the stage - and I don’t just mean the debate stage, I mean the stage of American political debate - every question is framed in ridicule, every response is alien to the audience.
What we need here is a good utilitarian - someone who is willing to compromise principle to make ideas more palatable to the masses. This is what you’re asking for Mike. You want Ron to sound more like the rest of the candidates blathering simple, easily digestible platitudes.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Eots,
“See, it doesn’t matter who really stands for something, he has to be a slick politician.”
Can’t you be both? Because that is what we need—a vibrant politician who stands for the things you and I care about. I do not believe Dr. Paul has demonstrated the capacity to be the front man of the revolution he may very well have started. In a world of telecommunications, the charisma of he who delivers the message is nearly as important as the message itself.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Mike makes a valid point. I am a Paulite among many things and i could tell immediately from the debates that the language needed to be put into more everyday terms that the 9-5 worker who doesn’t have a clue about fractional reserve banking or where inflation really come from could be enlightened. A lot of people get that haze over there eyes when you mention economics or monetary issues. Our educational system has taught us how to memorize information and not how to break it down and understand the core meanings or consequences. The Lemmings have become narrowly specialized.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
We need leaders not politicians!
Click to flag this comment as abusive
I am proud to have shaken his hand.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
As a Paul supporter since 1987, I must agree with most commentors that we libertarian-constitutionalists need a youthful, principled, charismatic spokesperson. Dr. Paul has performed an invaluable service by at least sticking to principle, which is a rara avis in CONgress.
I’m sure, at 73, that the present ferment among our “defrauded young” (Kipling) will raise up such a person to follow Jefferson, who was also not a dynamic speaker, yet was a great idea man.
The outlaw U.S. government has dug its own fiscal/monetary grave; we’re just waiting on its autopsy and burial; but America will survive as the Russians recently survived the USSR. How America survives will depend on the then extant knowledge base.
Dr. Paul has made, and is making, a substantial contribution to that overdue education. The point being that we do not need the USG, but it desperately needs US.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Addendum: Rudyard Kipling, Common Form (1918)
If any question why we died.
Tell them, because our fathers lied.
Rudyard Kipling, A Dead Statesman (1924)
I could not dig; I dare not rob;
Therefore I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine young and defrauded young.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Mr. Kauffman,
As a native of Alabama, I want to thank you for pointing out that Jeff Sessions is a dipshit. “Hey, Little Dipshit, are you afraid of the big, bad foreign people. Don’t worry, Little Dipshit. Papa Bush will protect you.” Alabamians ain’t perfect by any stretch, but I have never thought of us as a bunch of scared, pathetic souls (like Ladyboy Sessions) who need the president to protect us. Pathetic.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
The convention hasnt happened yet. I wonder just how many Paul fans are going to the rally next door?
That event can end up world news. It aint over yet.
This article is awesome. Well researched and fun to read. Kudos!
Click to flag this comment as abusive
The video was the best one yet. He would certainly be at home with our Founding Fathers, as well as our patriots of ‘61.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Ron Paul is an American hero.
History will prove this out.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
It is not clear to me why the demographic integrity of the self-indulgent distracted wage slaves Mr. Gavin would wish to preserve or their inability to comprehend some basic ideas and truths is very relevant to the review of The Revolution. It is especially unclear given Doctor Paul’s hard line on the issue and his call for a constitutional amendment abolishing birth right citizenship. Was there something imprecise about that?
It was not his inability to articulate these ideas; he did that admirably. It is just that Paul spoke and reasoned dialectically as well as rhetorically because he had to teach and reason beyond slogans and platitudes. Aristotle cautions public speakers against this. It confused folks back in dithyrambic Athens and it confuses folks in the global village. Yet Dr. Paul couldn’t condescend to his audience and paid them the compliment of assuming that they were literate and rational.
There were plenty of Ron Paul kids reading and reasoning as well as boogeying. They were Greek and Jew, White, Asian, African American and other. The intellectual gamut ran from Alex Jones to Richard Weaver. What was as astonishing as the diversity of his supporters was the real if forlorn hope, faith, and love with which they carried the message. No fear-mongering, demagoguery, or self-interest. These kids were consacrated into truth and the truth is far more important than politics and far more important than the demographic integrity of television viewers who like Bill Kristol because he looks familiar.
I agree with Plato and Professor Gottfried, let’s call them by their real name, “democrats.” Count the heads of the herd as they head off into Book IX of The Republic and the consequences of their ideas.
Mr. Gavin’s beer-swilling sports fans will get what they deserve: democracy, good and hard.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
If you read the transcripts, Paul won every debate. If you watch objectively, trying to see it as someone with no prior knowledge and little interest in politics would, Paul’s performances were basically complete disasters. The qualities that endear Paul to myself and many others (the stolidness, stoicism, integrity, honesty and fundamental decency -essentially the qualities of a German farmer)either hurt him or were no help to him. Time and time he again he was slammed, slandered and laughed at and his reaction was usually just stony silence or an annoyed, matter of fact correction. In sum, we pressed Dr. Paul into a service he wasn’t really fit for when what we really needed was a Dr. Johnson.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
“It is not clear to me why the demographic integrity of the self-indulgent distracted wage slaves Mr. Gavin would wish to preserve or their inability to comprehend some basic ideas and truths is very relevant to the review of The Revolution.”
The “let’s elect a new electorate” strategy? Where are these bright, conscientious libertarians of the future (who will also conveniently make a national voting majority) going to come from? Will we import them from some other country? Produce them domestically through some sort of libertarian eugenics/gene therapy breeding program? No? Well, it will be necessary then to package the paleo message in a compelling way to people who are not necessarily on the right half of the bell curve.
“I propose that our ‘front man’ must, first and foremost, be a man of principle, character, and hold an unwaivering belief in the importance of the Constitution. “
By any objective measure, it would be a massive victory if it were just only possible to elect someone who wouldn’t make things any more horrible than they already are. It isn’t. But speaking in terms of general principle, I doubt that every soldier, general or admiral who fought the Turks at Vienna or Lepanto was a model, scrupulous Christian. I’m glad that they were there, anyway.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
The nomination for Republican presidential candidate is not until September.
If everyone who felt as this Democrat writer, and would DEMAND Ron Paul be nominated
over McCain, Ron Paul could be president. WE THE PEOPLE run the country, not
the political parties, corporations, MSM. Bill stand up and demand Ron Paul
be president. Endorce Ron Paul today, make a statement, you have a platform
use it.
America is in deep shit and the ONLY person to say so is Ron Paul. There are
about 650 Ron Paul national delegates going to the national GOP convention.
With America demanding REAL CHANGE, Ron Paul could be our next president.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Great review!
I wish you’d said you were a lifelong Democrat earlier in the piece as that made me
sit up and pay attention a little more.
I agree with Tim. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard “I love everything Ron
Paul stands for, but I won’t vote for him because he can’t win”, I’d have enough money
to buy him the presidency! As long as Americans have this defeatist attitude, Ron
Paul will continue to be the president we need, but don’t deserve.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Horace O`Grady --- What you stated about Ron Paul “wanting” to increase H1B visa`s is new to me.
I have never ever heard him advocate more visa`s till our own were completely employed, then he would look at it.
I have been a follower of RP since the early 80`s.
So for you to say that untruth, makes me wonder what you ulterior motive is.
Are you just schill for Obama?
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Watch this video and you know why RP hasn’t done better than he has.
http://www.electionnews2008.com/Major%20Media%20Caught%20Lying%20again%20on%20this%20years%20Election%20Version%202.htm
Click to flag this comment as abusive
A Republic demands a curious, skeptical, reasoning and , most importantly...a discursive people. While the lapsed-Republic has spectators and dutiful factotums in abundance, Public and Higher Education, combined with a lush but cockeyed popular culture insures that discursive thinking is a lost art. The Socratic Method is something to be avoided at all costs in favor of this cute little assembly line of sophist box-checking called “No Child Left Behind”. Indeed, with the Deecider In Cheef’s blessed program, no child will be left behind because no child will actually go forward. The scum has risen to the top in this boiling pot. In the end however, the wisecracking Mr. Bush is not to blame, he’s simply the dream date for a public that would prefer to stay drunk on itself.
Mr. Paul’s message is easily distorted and derided by a passive-aggressive media that knows how to tweak the levers of sentimental irony in order to appeal to the baser instincts. The people graze as much on fast thinking as they do on fast food. Grinning fools like David Books, Bill O’Reilly, Karl Rove, William Kristol, David Frum...etc etc are accorded an important place in the forming of public opinion and it shows.
Even if Mr. Paul were elected.... in someone’s sentimental dreams....the vast majority of our sophist-swilling public would be mortified by what he espouses. Just as we claim to be historical isolationists while acting like imperialists, our people claim to be self-reliant independent citizens while demanding levels of nanny-state socialist programs that are more at home in the serf-redoubts of Europe.
Our diffident and amateur citizens deserve the politics they now wallow in, claiming they detest it while surrendering to it’s every blandishment. The proof of this is in Mr. Paul’s popular reputation as an anachronism, a crazy uncle with a lot of supporters but they must be tad nutty or, heaven forfend, idealistic too.
Before anyone with the chaste sense of historical prudence of the likes of Mr. Paul can be elected, and listened to, the people who purport to call themselves citizens of a Democratic Republic must live up to their presumptions. This would appear to be a dim chance at best. The fact that George W. Bush remains at large and continuing to babble incoherently is Exhibit A in why Mr. Paul remains unelectable. In the end, it might just be that we have to taste poverty again to respect the truth of our predicament. We aint getting a little steamy under the collar because of carbon-induced global warming, it’s because the ghosts of Mencken, Twain, Bierce et al are laughing their crepuscular asses off about their old nation reduced to a dark comedy that surprises even their lowest expectations.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
If you argue or disagree with Ron Paul you are argueing and disagreeing with the Founding Fathers Period.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Paul was not appealing to the proletariat as a separate class, which certainly Mr.O’Grady does like a good 19th Century revolutionary.
The question is why Mr.O’Grady comes to a conservative site to say as much, let alone slander as a traitor? I smell a Strasser type.
Dr. Paul wasn’t and isn’t a politician. He did two things correctly: he worked in the district he relies on for votes for many years, and he built a nationwide mail list--as if from a different a time, which he was--the populist-Right politics of the 70s.
To the extent we are going to continue in the electoral political arena, we will need a fighter and the torch falls to us, as the Hard Money-Bircher-Patriot camps head off into retirement, having fought the good fight with Honor.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
I have two theories. One, America is completely lost in it’s ways and has been a subject of the opiate of mass media. Two, many millions more have voted for Ron Paul, but the votes were “lost in the Diebold shuffle.” In any event, a wise man has offered his take on the United States of America and we are in the presence of one of the greatest politicians in my generation. Thank you Ron Paul, for you have cured my apathy.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
“the people who purport to call themselves citizens of a Democratic Republic “?????The last time I came out of my stupor for being educated at home,if memory serves me correctly,this is actually a Constitutional Republic,not a democracy,or democratic republic,which,by and by,is an oxymoron.All Democrocies have died a violent death,as well as all Republic Empires,and that would be the only thing that the moron,er,oxymoron would have in common.Washingtons’ 2nd farewell speach is one I would advise you to read,or as the case may be,re-read,and understand that his warning at the time is ringingtrue today.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
All is not lost, as I think there still is a workable solution.
What I propose is that we take it to the next HIGHER Level, rather than giving up on the Ron Paul campaign. The apropriate persons from the Ron Paul org need to contact Mr. Tom Selleck, and ascertain his feelings about joining the Ron Paul Team.
Changing it into .... the Tom Selleck for Prez, and Ron Paul for Vice Prez ticket. My, and should be yours, Dream Team!
Think about it… that could fix most of the probs talked about in previous posts. Plus, place the electibility of Mr. Selleck into the equation.
Now all we have to worry about is:(1) How would Mr. Selleck and Ron Paul feel about it, (2) is there enough time left, and (3) is it legal?
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Speaking as a Brit I have been following Ron Paul’s progress since August of last year. It has been of interest to me because I believe that America is the last best hope of stopping what appears to be the inexorable drive towards “global governance”, and a totalitarian tyranny whose full significance we shall only know when it is too late to do anything about it.
The one element that seems to be missing from the Ron Paul Revolution is a sense of urgency. Dr. Paul himself comes across as being most comfortable in the role of the academic and likes to talk in the language of a theorist, although he is also endowed with great practical wisdom. Perhaps he has been left out in the cold for so long, and seen so much of the corruption of the political process, he now believes that the only way America can get back on its republican track is by reaching out to and teaching the principles of liberty to the younger generations. Given that the radical re-education of America into the zeitgeist of the new world order has been going on since about 1933, 75 years, he may have a point.
From the standpoint of governance, Dr. Paul’s view is that America has drifted far from the principles of republican government enunciated in the founding documents of the nation: the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights. This may have something to do with the fact that the Constitution and the common law were suspended by FDR in 1933, under the 1917 Trading with the Enemy Act (amended) whose key provisions have never been repealed. Inter alia this Act gave the President dictatorial powers, defined the People of America as the Enemy of the United States, and enabled the government to confiscate the people’s gold as “booty”. This is why, since that time, the government of the United States has been at war with the People, who are held in bondage as captives of the State. These provisions were issued as Proclamations and, in the language of the Proclamations themselves, can only be rescinded by the President himself. There was an effort in 1976 to overturn all the emergency power statutes and with the exceptioon of the FDR Proclamation, this effort was successful. It is my belief that this specific Act is the reason why America has gradually become a communist state, controlled by bureaucratic “soviets”, while maintaining the superstructure of a Constitutional republic. For reference here is an essay that will shed some light on the subject.: http://www.freedomsite.net/emergncy.htm
It is my belief that until these facts are made known explicitly, and graphically, and the deceptive actions of those ruling America since that time are examined in light of these facts, it is unlikely that a sufficient groundswell will develop in support of a return to republican government.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
The “Ron Paul revolution” isn’t new. It’s the original American revolution, and it’s still going on.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
When I saw the exit polls for New Hampshire’s primary, I knew Paul wouldn’t win the nomination: 70% of GOP respondents had John McCain down as an “anti-war candidate.” As a nation, we’ve moved from crypto fascism to proto fascism, and the majority of the citizenry approves of this drift (in the name of safety, of course). Ron Paul’s campaign was a neap tide for freedom. Now, we’ll have to put up with years of low tide before the spring tide comes and freedom junkies can mount another charge.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
What is this, John Lennon day at TakiMag.com? Like Taki’s editorial, this article borrows a title from John Lennon.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
“n a vdare interview, Ron Paul stated that he would would increase Legal immigration and increase the H-1 B visa progam. Of course this would allow even more chinese and Indian nationals to steal jobs from White Americans”
So, Horace, you think a job is like a car, something the person who has it ‘owns’, and which, if someone else offers the employer a better deal, that person is ‘stealing’ from the employee?! If that’s true, why even bother showing up for work—after all, if the job is your property, no one should be able to take it from you just because you’re not using it, right?
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Post a Comment
By submitting this form, you give Taki's Magazine permission to publish this comment. Comments will be published at our discretion, and may be edited for clarity and length. Personal attacks, ethnic slurs, the riding of hobby horses and the beating of dead ones will be deleted as soon as they are detected by our small but alert staff. Repeat abusers of this policy will be barred from leaving comments. All comments reflect only the views of those posting them and not necessarily those of this website, its editors, or authors. For best formatting, please limit your response to one paragraph and don't hit "enter" to force line breaks.
Commenting is not available in this section entry.