2007-05-10

Thirteen Things That Should Earn Your Vote

Here are thirteen reasons you should vote for Ron Paul in the upcoming primary (and draft him to run as a Libertarian, if he doesn't get the nomination). It feels awfully strange for me to be endorsing a Republican candidate. I have never voted for a Republican in my life. But in this case, in the primary, I will make an exception, and if comes down to Dr. Paul vs. a Libertarian, I will vote for whichever I think more likely to win at the time. Maybe we'll get lucky, and Ron Paul will get the nomination, and we Libertarians will endorse (or join in nominating, I don't know how it would work) him as a party. But before we worry about such tactical matters, here are thirteen things that should guarantee Ron the votes of any peace loving and freedom loving American patriot:
  1. He will get us out of IRAQ. Not in years, or in months, but as quickly as it can be done without compromising their security. The (big government and neocon) Republicans won't. The Democrats won't. Ron Paul is the anti-war candidate. That alone should be enough reason.
  2. He will help us get back to sleep. After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, one of their admirals is quoted as saying "I fear we have awakened a slumbering giant, and filled him with a terrible resolve." The Giant hasn't slept a wink since 1941. It is time for the Giant to sleep again, so he will be prepared, if and when he is again threatened.
  3. He will make us wealthy. We have an economic system which is the most powerful engine of wealth creation known to man. But that engine is fouled with interventions which sap it's performance, and misdirect it's output. Real, natural economic growth benefits everyone. Government distorted economic growth benefits only the aristocracy of pull. Look around you: which do you see?
  4. He will tell us the truth. You can tell if most politicians are lying by watching her face carefully. If her lips are moving, she is lying. Dr. Paul throughout his life, has stated his intentions, stuck to his guns, and kept his promises.
  5. He will return our independence. We do not need NAFTA or CAFTA for free trade. We only need to drop our tariffs and let the market work. We do not need the UN to be a force for peace. We can become a shining example of rational peace by refusing foreign adventures, but being prepared, if attacked, to respond, to crush the aggressor, and to withdraw, without occupation and without nation building.
  6. He will start the process of emancipating our posterity from the crushing load of debt that is the legacy of big government. This debt is taxation, to be imposed on a helpless group of people without any representation. This wrong must be redressed.
  7. He will protect our money supply. The Federal Reserve board is the root of all inflation. When they print fiat dollars, their value The value comes from a reduction in the value of the money already circulating. This predominantly hurts the poor, as the rich have investment bankers to advise them. It is the most regressive and most destructive of taxes.
  8. He will secure our borders against illegal immigration. Libertarians want open borders. But we recognize that we can ill afford them, until we have put our house in order. Before we can open our borders to peaceful people, we must roll back the welfare state, so those come come to produce, and produce and prosper, not to enter the hospice of welfare. Before we can entirely roll back the welfare state, we must build our economy so that it is workers, not jobs, that are scarce. Once this is done, we can allow more legal immigration, instead of ignoring illegals.
  9. He will veto any national ID card bill which crosses his desk. If Americans want to hear the chilling words "your papers, sir", they should rent Casablanca, and take careful note of what happens in a police state, when one is unable to produce them. Then he should take a moment to be grateful that we are not in that time or that place.
  10. He will protect our privacy. Identity theft is possible because Americans now have a single identifier, their SSN. It should be used only for social security. Next, laws requiring businesses to release the bank balances, medical records, and other private information of their customers should be repealed. Government has the right to invade your privacy only with a warrant issued by a judge to whom probable cause has been presented.
  11. He will protect your property. The Constitution allows the government to take your property only for public use and only with just compensation. But now, the government has arrogated unto itself the power to confiscate your property, without just compensation (which would be the amount for which you were willing to sell it), and give it to private companies for private use. Even worse, some regulations allow the government to forbid you use of your property, while leaving you the deed, and to confiscate the value of your property with no compensation at all. This tyrannous behavior is inexcusable, and must be stopped.
  12. He will restore us to a constitutional and sane foreign policy. No more will we be dragged into foreign wars, in countries we cannot locate on the map, because of entangling alliances which we have formed, in defiance of the warnings that both Jefferson and Washington gave our nation in it's youth. We have troops in 130 countries. The constitution only authorized us to keep troops in one. Support the troops. Support them here.
  13. He will make us safe. Government cannot protect us from all the evils of the world, but our biggest threat comes from government itself, finally free of the constitutional chains which have bound it, and mad with power, it is wasting our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor with abandon. It must be restrained before it is too late.
Those are just 13 of the many reasons that Ron Paul is the best hope for America. Of course, each time your best hope is taken, your second best hope becomes your best hope. But each time, it is more distant and more forlorn. So I beg you with all the earnestness at my command: don't let this hope go. Join the Ron Paul Revolution, and remind the politicians that America is yours, not theirs.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nicely put.

Anonymous said...

"Ron Paul is the antiwar candidate."

Which is why he wouldn't get my vote in a million years. Leaving Iraq now would create an extremely illiberal Al Qaeda ministate in Sunni Iraq, from which they've promised they will launch attack against us here. My most important liberty is the right to not be killed, and putting our heads in the sand won't do it.

I'm a libertarian and a universalist, and not a pacifist or a nativist. I own a gun so I can secure my rights and help my neighbors secure theirs, and I want a government that kills terrorists and helps people outside the country secure their rights against those that would oppress them -- because they're coming here, too.

Unknown said...

It is a common error to assume that because we would not want to live under certain conditions that nobody would want to live under those conditions. This error becomes apparent when you consider that there is not a single government in the world that any self-respecting Libertarian (is there any other kind?) would want to live under. So if we are to take your argument to it's logical conclusion, we are morally required to overthrow every government on earth, since they are all, to some extent or another, by our definitions, illiberal.

To put it another way, consider how the United States or Britain would view the brand new nation of Libertania, were it to be established. They would have no welfare state, no minimum wage laws, no drug laws, no "reasonable" restrictions on gun ownership. In short, they would be regarded by most non-libertarians as the devil incarnate. If we say that because the government in Iraq does not fit our criteria of a good place to live, we should attack it, it stands to reason that if we Libertarians ever establish our Utopia, it should be invaded and the regime changed, since it would not fit the criteria of a good place to live advanced by any of the governments in the world.

This demonstrates from both sides why we should not be involved in Iraq. It is up to the people of Iraq to establish the government under which they are to live, just as it was up to us to establish the government under which we would live, two centuries ago.

There is one reason that we would be within our rights to attack Iraq. If they attacked us. This is not impossible. It has never happened, but it could. If and only if it did happen, we would be well within our rights to nuke Baghdad (or the city of our choice) off the map. I would still not recommend any kind of "nation building" exercises. This is mostly because they don't work. If and only if they ever attack us, they should be left crippled and bleeding. Otherwise, they should be left alone. The price of tolerance is tolerance.

If you have fallen for the neocon line that they hate us because they are evil and we are good, you might want to consider that every reputable person in our own intelligence community believes
that although there are such people, the vast majority of terrorist recruits are recruits because of something that happened to them that they blame (rightly or wrongly) on us. I would be very happy to see Al Qaeda castrated by a lack of recruits. The only way to do that is to stop creating victims, and stop doing things that make it appear that we are creating victims.

If you want to go, personally, and fight for a Libertarian government in Iraq, more power to you. Don't drag me along, because I don't believe you will find anyone to fight on your side.

Anonymous said...

Sounds like he has some good ideas--freeing us from our "policeman of the world" mentality, lowering the debt, and ending the ruse of "free trade." I don't agree with all of his ideas though.

However the political parties are not interested in these ideas and you see that they've already started to undermine him with by calling him a nut and crazy and all the rest. You see they're doing the same thing with Dennis Kucinich now, just as they did with Ross Perot so many years ago.

These 3 men may or may not even share similar viewpoints but the common thread is that they all are not part of the insiders club that is the democratic and republican parties.

It's all about power and not about ideas or what's best for the country.

Unknown said...

Note that Dr. Paul does not oppose free trade: he opposes free trade treaties. There is a difference. He would repeal the tariffs that prevent us, for example, from sweetening our food with sugar instead of corn syrup. He just wouldn't let foreign countries control U.S. policy
(or atempt to control theirs) through these byzantine agreements.