Ron Paul - let's actually keep this topic Ron Paul

[francejamie]

Cathy -
You talk about Ron Paul being a Libertarian, because he doesn't want the federal government to run things, but wants those issues to be legislated at the state level.
That's not actually a pure Libertarian. I'd say it's more of a pure Republican ideology.

A pure Libertarian wouldn't be legislating to prevent very much at all.

[Dharma]

Cathy said:

Dharma,

I can understand your concerns. Ron Paul never made the purist Libertarians happy because there were several issues where he parted ways with them. Border security and immigration being one of them.
Ron Paul sees himself as a 'libertarian' in the dictionary definition sense of the word;

lib·er·tar·i·an
1. a person who advocates liberty, esp. with regard to thought or conduct.
2. a person who maintains the doctrine of free will (distinguished from necessitarian).
–adjective 3. advocating liberty or conforming to principles of liberty.
4. maintaining the doctrine of free will.


His platform of restoring a Constitutional government is focused on rolling back the size and scope of the Federal Government from the decades long trend of interfering with and dictating policy that should have been left to the States.

His focus is on making sure that the Federal Government is not overstepping it's Constitutional limits.
I have never heard him talk about having any type of agenda to privatize services that should be the responsibilty of State government.
Privatization of services like water, sanitation, and police would still be the domain of States legislative decisions.

Protecting the health, safety, and property of American citizens has always been viewed as a legimate role of government. The items you cite are the responsibilty of the local governments, not the Federal government, therefore it would go against Ron Paul's philosophy to meddle in State and local decisions.

He does believe in a true free market economy, but what I hear him talking about is working to make the US economy more genuinely free market. That means there's quite a lot of work to do trying to reduce or eliminate corporate welfare, as well as reduce the micro management regulation of trade and credit.

On another topic...
There will always be people who will be susceptible to fear-mongering and there will always be people who want to believe that the people they elected know better than they do and are above question.
The rest of us have to commit to working to move things forward in spite of them. We need to rescue our national defense before it collapses from financing a military that is spread all over the world.

Sooner or later, the fearful might come to realize that the "terrorist" boogeyman is not under every bed and behind every closet door. They should be more concerned about the tap on their phone and the privacy of their personal information.

Thanks Cathy. If this is the case, I will go back to entertaining thoughts of campaigning for Ron Paul. I do belong to a Yahoo message board that touts Ron Paul in every daily edition. I read pages and pages of information about him every evening. I'm just concerned about a president that could lean to the radical side - like the one we have now.

[Cathy]

Cathy -
You talk about Ron Paul being a Libertarian, because he doesn't want the federal government to run things, but wants those issues to be legislated at the state level.
That's not actually a pure Libertarian. I'd say it's more of a pure Republican ideology.

A pure Libertarian wouldn't be legislating to prevent very much at all.

francejamie,

I'm not sure what I have said that you interpret as saying that Ron Paul wants to prevent (?)something.

When the media interviews Ron Paul, and asks him why he is running as a Republican or asks him if he is really a Libertarian pretending to be a Republican, he explains that he is a Republican as the party used to (and still claims to) stand for small (Federal) government and lower taxes AND he is a libertarian in the sense that the dictionary defines it; a person who believes in liberty.

When he ran for President as the Libertarian Party candidate, he had to switch his party registration to do that, but he switched back afterwards.
He says that he represents what the Republican Party used to be, but he is probably more libertarian than what the Republican Party has delivered lately. For the last few decades, I think the Republican Party has let the social conservatives run the show because they saw it as a way to get votes. It seems to have worked for them in the past, but that might be coming to an end.

RP's Constitutionalist (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutionalist) beliefs would prevent him from using the government to mandate any type of 'social conservative' agenda, even though he will tell anyone who asks that he does not personally agree with some lifestyles and choices that are considered socially liberal. He says that he believes that these issues are outside of the Federal Governments Constitutional limits to legislate and has acted pretty consistent with that in Congress.

The postings on Wikipedia about Ron Paul (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Paul) and the entry about libertarianism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian) might be helpful to understand and sort out the confusion between what being a libertarian means versus being a member of the Libertarian Party. I think it will....but as you will see, there are eleven different "flavors" of libertarian philosophy listed on the right side of the Wiki page.

Being a libertarian and a Constitutionalist should not raise concerns about losing your right to choose your own lifestyle or exercise your personal values, as long as you aren't harming others.

I consider myself a libertarian philisophically.
I don't hunt or own a gun, but I don't think they should be banned in any way. I also think that the "war on drugs" should be abandoned. I don't do drugs or smoke weed, but I don't think it should be illegal any more than alchohol should be. I'm not a big fan of getting an alcohol buzz either.
I don't defend the right to smoke tobacco just because I happen to be a smoker. It's about freedom of individual choice.
I don't want to tell anyone what color to paint their house or what their mailbox should look like, but I would not do anything to prevent anyone from living in a neighborhood that imposes those rules. Just don't take away my ability to live somewhere without those kinds of rules. Those kinds of rules should be voluntary on as small of a governance scale as possible. If the State legislature decided to pass a law making HOA neighborhoods mandatory, my right to choose would disappear.
If the Town of Cary made it mandatory, every citizen of Cary would lose their right to choose, and if that's what the citizens want, then fine, but if they decided they didn't, it would be a lot easier for the citizens of Cary to reverse that law locally than it would for me or anyone else to reverse a State law.

It's kind of like that when RP talks about scaling back the Federal intrusion into legislation that should be decided at the level of the State and local governments. To say that the States should legislate instead of the Fed is not inconsistent with libertarianism. The abolishment of any level of government is anarchism, not libertarianism. We say that we live by the Rule of Law in America with reason.

The American government was not designed with anarchism as a model. It was designed to keep power decentralized and closer to the people.
Decentralizing government is the best way to protect individual freedom of choice for the most people. It's easier to balance a set of rules that best protects the most freedom on a local level.

We, as a nation of individuals, accept the need for some type of government for the purpose of protecting individual life, liberty, and property. That is what our American model of being a Democratic Republic was intended to achieve. American governance seems to have wandered away from the protection of individual liberty toward more concentrated top down 'one size fits all' mandates over life, liberty and property.
The whole idea of having separation of powers between the Executive, the Congressional, and the Judicial was to try to insure against a concentration of power in the hands of a small set of individuals.
That ideal, I think you will agree, has been seriously eroded.

America needs a President who will work to get us back to that Constitutional ideal, and I have read nothing that Ron Paul has ever said that diminishes my confidence that he is the guy that would work hard to get us there. What he says now, has said over his years in Congress, and reflected in his record, for once in my adult life, encourages my Hope for America instead.

I hope that I actually answered your question?

Cathy

[Cathy]

The following hour long interview of Ron Paul by John Stossel will not be aired on television. ABC decided not to air the segment, but they do have it available online:


Ron Paul Unplugged (http://www.abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=3970423&page=1)
John Stossel Interviews Republican on Personal Freedom, Drugs, Prostitution and Gay Marriage

The interview is a good one and might answer many questions about Ron Paul's position on issues.

Cathy

[francejamie]

As I've said, he's my favorite of the Republican candidates.

[Cathy]

As I've said, he's my favorite of the Republican candidates.

Mine too.

An exceptionally intelligent and ethical man running for President. 8-O
2008 could shape up to be an exceptionally good year for Americans.
It all depends though...

Cathy

[Brent]

2008 could shape up to be an exceptionally good year for Americans.
It all depends though...

Indeed. In the spirit of keeping this topic Ron Paul, I'd say that it depends on Bush and Cheney's illegal domestic policies, the Iraq war, illegal aliens and municipal growth policies in the Triangle.

(sorry, I just thought I'd accelerate the inevitable topic change) :-D :wink:

[Cathy]

2008 could shape up to be an exceptionally good year for Americans.
It all depends though...

Indeed. In the spirit of keeping this topic Ron Paul, I'd say that it depends on Bush and Cheney's illegal domestic policies, the Iraq war, illegal aliens and municipal growth policies in the Triangle.

(sorry, I just thought I'd accelerate the inevitable topic change) :-D :wink:

Well....speaking of the Bush/Cheney school of war mongering and corporate elitism....

The strongest message that could be sent against those who are eroding our economy, our liberties, and security would be to elect Ron Paul.
The status quo crowd would rather see anyone other than Ron Paul elected.

Cathy

[Cathy]

Ron Paul draws big Denver crowd (http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_8141602)
By Kirk Mitchell

Article Last Updated: 02/01/2008 07:55:01 PM MST
http://extras.mnginteractive.com/live/media/site36/2008/0201/20080201__RONPAUL_AC_212A~p1_200.jpg
The alarm in the Colorado Convention Center employee's voice was verging on panic.

"That room is packed so tight it's not even funny," he shouted into a radio tonight as the Segway he was riding hummed and swerved down a wide carpeted hallway.

The crowd for Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul was so large it surprised his own organizers. They were forced to hurriedly open partitions to double the size of the ballroom space minutes before Paul's scheduled appearance in the Four Seasons Ballroom. When that wasn't enough hundreds of people stood rimming the hall that sits 1,536.....
http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_8141602