The debate in Washington has again turned to federal funding of stem cell research, with President Bush moving to veto legislation passed recently by Congress. Those engaged in this debate tend to split into warring camps claiming exclusive moral authority to decide the issue once and for all.
On one side, those who support the President’s veto tend to argue against embryonic stem cell research, pointing to the individual rights of the embryo being discarded for use in research. On the other hand are those who argue the embryo will be discarded any way, and the research may provide valuable cures for people suffering from terrible illnesses.
In Washington, these two camps generally advocate very different policies. The first group wants a federal ban on all such research, while the latter group expects the research to be federally-subsidized. Neither side in this battle seems to consider the morality surrounding the rights of federal taxpayers.
Our founding fathers devised a system of governance that limited federal activity very narrowly. In doing so, they intended to keep issues such as embryonic stem cell research entirely out of Washington’s hands. They believed issues such as this should be tackled by free people acting freely in their churches and medical associations, and in the marketplace that would determine effective means of research. When government policies on this issue were to be developed, our founders would have left them primarily to state legislators to decide in accord with community standards.
Their approach was also the only one consistent with a concern for the rights and freedom of all individuals, and for limiting negative impacts upon taxpayers. When Washington subsidizes something, it does so at the direct expense of the taxpayer. Likewise, when Washington bans something, it generally requires a federal agency and a team of federal agents— often heavily-armed federal agents—to enforce the ban. These agencies become the means by which the citizenry is harassed by government intrusions. Yet it is the mere existence of these agencies, and the attendant costs associated with operating them, that leads directly to the abuse of the taxpayers’ pocketbooks.
If Congress attempts to override the President’s veto, I will support the President. As a physician, I am well aware that certain stem cells have significant medical potential and do not raise the moral dilemmas presented by embryonic stem cell research. My objection is focused on the issue of federal funding. Unfortunately, in the Washington environment of “either subsidize it, or else ban it,” it is unlikely there will be much focus given to the issue of federal funding. Instead, virulent charges will fly regarding who is willing to sacrifice the lives and health of others to make a political point.
Only when Washington comes to understand that our founders expressly intended for our federal government to be limited in scope, will policy questions such as this be rightly understood. But that understanding will not come until the people demand their elected officials act in accordance with these principles.
Saturday
WHAT I THINK....GARY NORTH
I was watching Gandhi recently, as I do every year or two. It is inspirational to me. It tells the story of a man who could not possibly win the battles he chose to fight, but did anyway. There is no doubt that it is a propaganda film, funded in part by the Indian government. It scrambles his chronology. But, on the whole, it got the story right. Mohandas K. Gandhi, a lawyer, was able to transform Indian politics. He did this through force of moral character and shrewd tactics that made every official response either "Damned if we do; damned if we don’t." I read "The Gandhi Nobody Knows" when it was published in 1983, a year after the movie was released. I know the strange side of the man. But he mobilized a huge nation without recourse to violence. That was his great legacy.
I also like the movie because it is the story of a failed empire. By 1945, the British Empire had spent itself into near bankruptcy because of two wars. It was a pale shadow of itself. It would soon grow much paler.
There are many scenes in the movie that have long grabbed my imagination, but none so much as the one in which Gandhi is seated at a table with a British military official. The official asks rhetorically, "You don’t really expect us just to march out of India, do you?" Gandhi replies, "Yes, that is exactly what I expect you to do." In 1947, they did.
What has this to do with Ron Paul, who is running for President? At least this much: he also opposes violence, he also opposes empire, and he also believes in the long run that justice will prevail. So, he does what Gandhi did. He keeps telling the story of how a better society can be built, must be built, and will eventually be built when men reduce their commitment to violence as a way of shaping the world. This includes violence committed by the civil government.
They called Gandhi the mahatma: the great self. Ron Paul is the mahatma of self-government.
He gains applause from the anti-war Left, small as it is. He gains applause from free market advocates, who are weary of government interference in their lives. And he drives the muddled middle crazy.
Note: he doesn’t wear a loincloth.
THE WEB PHENOMENON
After the first debate among the ten Republican candidates, the mainstream media’s polls ranked Giuliani, McCain, and Romney as the front-runners. But the on-line polls were blow-outs for Ron Paul.
What was going on?
After the second debate, on May 15, broadcast by Fox News, the Fox News website allowed viewers to vote for the nominee. These presumably were hard-core Fox News viewers. Over 40,000 voted. Romney got 29%. Paul got 25%. Giuliani got 19%.
Fox News has been supportive of the Iraq war from the beginning. Paul in 2003 voted against the funding of the Iraq war, one of the handful of Republicans in Congress who did. So, how could it be that Paul, an outspoken critic of the war, could receive that high a percentage on Fox News’ own website?
He had done even better on MSNBC’s website poll after the first debate, broadcast by MSNBC on May 3. The results were amazing. He overwhelmed the others in the four positive categories.
He got even higher percentages on the CNN poll.
The two networks that hosted the respective debates drew audiences above a million – close to two million. In both cases, Ron Paul did extremely well on the networks’ web polling pages. Yet he is invisible in the general polls, which are based on random sampling.
I believe the general polls are correct. The public does not know who Ron Paul is. But TV viewers who were politically active enough to go to the websites of the broadcasting networks are big supporters of Paul.
There is a disconnect here. The Establishment’s pundits offer various explanations, but none has any scientific support. One of the least plausible explanations after the May 3 poll was that Paul’s supporters are so sophisticated digitally that they found ways to overcome the designs of the two web polling sites: MSNBC’s and CNN’s. A few libertarian geeks somehow made it look as though there is a large army of Paul supporters out there.
This argument is bizarre. There is a huge problem with it. Where did all the other voters go? Paul got half or more of the CNN voters in some categories. There were around 75,000 votes recorded. Somehow, the voters who were for the Big Three had their votes sent into cyberspace by Paul’s nefarious genius computer programmers, who then substituted votes for Paul. The Establishment candidates’ supporters did not have their votes recorded. I call this the "hanging electrons" explanation.
In the case of the CNN poll, the number of votes cast was closer to 70,000 per question, which were not the same questions as the MSNBC poll offered. Yet the results were much the same. The libertarian programmers somehow beat the protective designs of two separate polling pages.
I think there is better explanation. About half of the viewers who were enthusiastic enough to go to the networks’ web pages to vote were Ron Paul’s supporters. The logic of my explanation rests on the percentage of viewers who voted, compared with the 1.76 million people who watched MSNBC’s broadcast. The audience size figures are here.
This means about 4.3% voted on CNN’s site. That is slightly over 4%. It was just under 4% for MSNBC’s site. We’ve seen this percentage before: Pareto’s 20/80 law. Twenty percent of 20% (4%) voted on-line. This is exactly what I would have predicted. In other words, the poll was a faithful reflection of predictable responses. More than 6% voting would have been a remarkable statistic, one indicative of deep and wide interest in national politics. There was no such enthusiasm. That is why so few people tuned in.
This means that there were no missing votes for the Big Three candidates. It also means that Ron Paul’s supporters are hard-core fanatics. They were the driving force of the web polls.
There are statistically inescapable facts governing the Republican election campaign so far. First, most people don’t care and are not watching the debates. Second, among those who watched, a normal Pareto percentage of them went to the trouble to vote on-line. These are the elite of the Republican Party’s ideological activists: 20% of the elite 20%. About half of these people support Ron Paul.
When I say "activists," don’t mean people who write checks, knock on doors, stuff envelopes, stuff ballot boxes, and generally do the grunt work of political campaigns. I mean people who care enough about political ideas to sit through hours of political piffle and then take the time to go to a website and vote.
These people are presumably the wave of the digital future. Like Gandhi’s supporters in 1915, they are not numerous. They will not determine the outcome of the Republican primaries. They will not attend the Republican Party’s convention. But they are out there, and they are unlikely to go away.
I was part of such a group in 1960: the "Goldwater for Vice President" movement. I was on the geographical fringes. I was not in Chicago in 1960, nor did I get in the floor demonstration. But I was for it. That group eventually grew. It got Goldwater nominated in 1964 and got Reagan elected in 1980.
What happened immediately after the debates in May is bad news for the Republican Establishment. They have dismissed this as irrelevant. They will forget about it when Ron Paul fails to win the nomination. But there is no question in my mind that the Republican Party will move toward the right – the non-interventionist, limited-government Old Right – over the next three or four decades. This will take place at the bottom, i.e., at the local level, not at the top: New York City’s financial district and Washington, D.C. The move toward the Old Right will accelerate when the checks from Washington don’t buy much because of inflation. That day is coming.
Meanwhile, Ron Paul is building a digital mailing list.
This is the sleeper fact of the Great Debates.
MAILING LISTS
The inventor of the political mailing list is forgotten today. His name was Charles Bryan. His brother, William Jennings Bryan, is well remembered. So valuable was that mailing list and the support it represented that the Democrats nominated Charles Bryan for Vice President in 1924. Charles Bryan had used that mailing list in three Presidential campaigns: 1896, 1900, and 1908.
In early 1965, in the wake of Goldwater’s electoral defeat, Richard Viguerie sat down in the office of the Clerk of the House of Representatives and began writing down the names of people who had donated $50 or more to Goldwater’s campaign – the equivalent of about $300 today.
By law in those days, federal political campaigns had to turn over to the Clerk the names and addresses of donors of $50 or more. Goldwater’s campaign had filed 15,000 names and addresses. Viguerie planned to write them all down and create a mailing list with them.
After a few days, he realized that he could not get the job done by himself. He hired some women to do this grunt work. Then, after they had copied 12,500 names, the Clerk decided that he did not like all this and forbade them to do it. Viguerie says he should have told the Clerk to contact his lawyer. But he was young and inexperienced back then, so he complied.
Those 12,500 names became the basis of a mailing list empire that changed American conservatism and, through Ronald Reagan, the world.
A similar result took place in 1972. It was George McGovern who first spotted the potential of direct mail in a Presidential campaign. More accurately, his direct-mail operative, Morris Dees, spotted it. The pre-convention McGovern campaign was made possible by Dees’ direct-mail skills.
As far as Presidential politics goes, three technologies have undermined the Establishment’s monopoly: the mass-produced paperback book (1964), direct mail (1972), and the Internet (2004). The Presidential candidate who first made the Internet work for him was Howard Dean, whose pre-convention campaign in 2004 was entirely based on the Internet. He raised over $40 million, but then squandered both the money and his lead by a lack of local organization in the primaries.
On all media fronts except direct mail, liberals are falling behind. Network news shows have steadily declined in popularity. Cable TV is replacing the networks, which includes network news. Newspaper readership has fallen like a stone since 1993. In 1993, 58% of Americans said that they had read a newspaper "yesterday." In 2002, this percentage was 41%. Three-quarters of Americans under age 30 do not read a newspaper daily. In the 30–49 age group, it is 37%. Liberals have bet the political farm on capital-intensive technologies and government regulation of the communications industry. They are losing the bet. The best book on all this is by Richard Viguerie and David Franke: America’s Right Turn: How Conservatives Used New and Alternative Media to Take Power.
Now Ron Paul is assembling a digital mailing list, or multiple lists, that will be used to educate and motivate hard-core supporters. It is under the radar of the Establishment.
COMMITMENT
It is clear to all sides that Ron Paul is the most ideologically committed politician in the country. There has been nothing like him since Howard Buffett retired in the early 1950’s. Nobody remembers Howard Buffett today except hard-core libertarians and his son, Warren.
It is Ron Paul’s uniquely consistent voting record that gets him on liberal-left television talk shows like the Daily Show and Bill Maher’s show. The hosts are willing to give him time on camera because he opposed the Iraq war when nobody else did. He has also voted to shrink the state ever since he was elected in 1976. While they don’t share his view of domestic policy, they are respectful to find any politician who just will not toe the Party line.
For years, he had a narrow but highly committed audience. Now, after three decades, he is beginning to expand that audience. He speaks his mind, and his mind is informed by a consistent philosophy of limited government, meaning Constitutional government as understood in 1788. The kinds of voters who sit through an evening of bloviating politicos and then go to a web page to vote are the kinds of people he is attracting.
These mailing lists, if used to educate people to the principles of limited civil government and expanded self-government, will begin to affect the next generation of voters.
It does not take postage to mail e-letters. It does not take printers, ink, and paper.
He has been committed to a worldview. No other politician is to the same degree. By being committed at the cost of risking electoral defeat, Ron Paul can now attract people who are looking for their own areas of commitment.
If he gets this message to his subscribers, he can help them become active in a movement to shrink the strangling hand of tax-funded bureaucracy.
CONCLUSION
Ron Paul is convinced that self-government is the wave of the future. Empire isn’t. That was Gandhi’s message in 1915. It did not seem plausible back then. By 1947, it did.
It has taken until quite recently for India to move economically more toward self-government and away from Nehru’s Fabian socialism. Sadly, the U.S. economy seems to be moving back toward Nehru. The state keeps getting bigger in the visible affairs of this world. But a great decentralization is taking place: in education, on the Internet, and with technology generally. The wave of the future is not toward Fabianism and its legacy. Ron Paul’s campaign is proof of this.
So, let us sit back and enjoy the campaign.
I also like the movie because it is the story of a failed empire. By 1945, the British Empire had spent itself into near bankruptcy because of two wars. It was a pale shadow of itself. It would soon grow much paler.
There are many scenes in the movie that have long grabbed my imagination, but none so much as the one in which Gandhi is seated at a table with a British military official. The official asks rhetorically, "You don’t really expect us just to march out of India, do you?" Gandhi replies, "Yes, that is exactly what I expect you to do." In 1947, they did.
What has this to do with Ron Paul, who is running for President? At least this much: he also opposes violence, he also opposes empire, and he also believes in the long run that justice will prevail. So, he does what Gandhi did. He keeps telling the story of how a better society can be built, must be built, and will eventually be built when men reduce their commitment to violence as a way of shaping the world. This includes violence committed by the civil government.
They called Gandhi the mahatma: the great self. Ron Paul is the mahatma of self-government.
He gains applause from the anti-war Left, small as it is. He gains applause from free market advocates, who are weary of government interference in their lives. And he drives the muddled middle crazy.
Note: he doesn’t wear a loincloth.
THE WEB PHENOMENON
After the first debate among the ten Republican candidates, the mainstream media’s polls ranked Giuliani, McCain, and Romney as the front-runners. But the on-line polls were blow-outs for Ron Paul.
What was going on?
After the second debate, on May 15, broadcast by Fox News, the Fox News website allowed viewers to vote for the nominee. These presumably were hard-core Fox News viewers. Over 40,000 voted. Romney got 29%. Paul got 25%. Giuliani got 19%.
Fox News has been supportive of the Iraq war from the beginning. Paul in 2003 voted against the funding of the Iraq war, one of the handful of Republicans in Congress who did. So, how could it be that Paul, an outspoken critic of the war, could receive that high a percentage on Fox News’ own website?
He had done even better on MSNBC’s website poll after the first debate, broadcast by MSNBC on May 3. The results were amazing. He overwhelmed the others in the four positive categories.
He got even higher percentages on the CNN poll.
The two networks that hosted the respective debates drew audiences above a million – close to two million. In both cases, Ron Paul did extremely well on the networks’ web polling pages. Yet he is invisible in the general polls, which are based on random sampling.
I believe the general polls are correct. The public does not know who Ron Paul is. But TV viewers who were politically active enough to go to the websites of the broadcasting networks are big supporters of Paul.
There is a disconnect here. The Establishment’s pundits offer various explanations, but none has any scientific support. One of the least plausible explanations after the May 3 poll was that Paul’s supporters are so sophisticated digitally that they found ways to overcome the designs of the two web polling sites: MSNBC’s and CNN’s. A few libertarian geeks somehow made it look as though there is a large army of Paul supporters out there.
This argument is bizarre. There is a huge problem with it. Where did all the other voters go? Paul got half or more of the CNN voters in some categories. There were around 75,000 votes recorded. Somehow, the voters who were for the Big Three had their votes sent into cyberspace by Paul’s nefarious genius computer programmers, who then substituted votes for Paul. The Establishment candidates’ supporters did not have their votes recorded. I call this the "hanging electrons" explanation.
In the case of the CNN poll, the number of votes cast was closer to 70,000 per question, which were not the same questions as the MSNBC poll offered. Yet the results were much the same. The libertarian programmers somehow beat the protective designs of two separate polling pages.
I think there is better explanation. About half of the viewers who were enthusiastic enough to go to the networks’ web pages to vote were Ron Paul’s supporters. The logic of my explanation rests on the percentage of viewers who voted, compared with the 1.76 million people who watched MSNBC’s broadcast. The audience size figures are here.
This means about 4.3% voted on CNN’s site. That is slightly over 4%. It was just under 4% for MSNBC’s site. We’ve seen this percentage before: Pareto’s 20/80 law. Twenty percent of 20% (4%) voted on-line. This is exactly what I would have predicted. In other words, the poll was a faithful reflection of predictable responses. More than 6% voting would have been a remarkable statistic, one indicative of deep and wide interest in national politics. There was no such enthusiasm. That is why so few people tuned in.
This means that there were no missing votes for the Big Three candidates. It also means that Ron Paul’s supporters are hard-core fanatics. They were the driving force of the web polls.
There are statistically inescapable facts governing the Republican election campaign so far. First, most people don’t care and are not watching the debates. Second, among those who watched, a normal Pareto percentage of them went to the trouble to vote on-line. These are the elite of the Republican Party’s ideological activists: 20% of the elite 20%. About half of these people support Ron Paul.
When I say "activists," don’t mean people who write checks, knock on doors, stuff envelopes, stuff ballot boxes, and generally do the grunt work of political campaigns. I mean people who care enough about political ideas to sit through hours of political piffle and then take the time to go to a website and vote.
These people are presumably the wave of the digital future. Like Gandhi’s supporters in 1915, they are not numerous. They will not determine the outcome of the Republican primaries. They will not attend the Republican Party’s convention. But they are out there, and they are unlikely to go away.
I was part of such a group in 1960: the "Goldwater for Vice President" movement. I was on the geographical fringes. I was not in Chicago in 1960, nor did I get in the floor demonstration. But I was for it. That group eventually grew. It got Goldwater nominated in 1964 and got Reagan elected in 1980.
What happened immediately after the debates in May is bad news for the Republican Establishment. They have dismissed this as irrelevant. They will forget about it when Ron Paul fails to win the nomination. But there is no question in my mind that the Republican Party will move toward the right – the non-interventionist, limited-government Old Right – over the next three or four decades. This will take place at the bottom, i.e., at the local level, not at the top: New York City’s financial district and Washington, D.C. The move toward the Old Right will accelerate when the checks from Washington don’t buy much because of inflation. That day is coming.
Meanwhile, Ron Paul is building a digital mailing list.
This is the sleeper fact of the Great Debates.
MAILING LISTS
The inventor of the political mailing list is forgotten today. His name was Charles Bryan. His brother, William Jennings Bryan, is well remembered. So valuable was that mailing list and the support it represented that the Democrats nominated Charles Bryan for Vice President in 1924. Charles Bryan had used that mailing list in three Presidential campaigns: 1896, 1900, and 1908.
In early 1965, in the wake of Goldwater’s electoral defeat, Richard Viguerie sat down in the office of the Clerk of the House of Representatives and began writing down the names of people who had donated $50 or more to Goldwater’s campaign – the equivalent of about $300 today.
By law in those days, federal political campaigns had to turn over to the Clerk the names and addresses of donors of $50 or more. Goldwater’s campaign had filed 15,000 names and addresses. Viguerie planned to write them all down and create a mailing list with them.
After a few days, he realized that he could not get the job done by himself. He hired some women to do this grunt work. Then, after they had copied 12,500 names, the Clerk decided that he did not like all this and forbade them to do it. Viguerie says he should have told the Clerk to contact his lawyer. But he was young and inexperienced back then, so he complied.
Those 12,500 names became the basis of a mailing list empire that changed American conservatism and, through Ronald Reagan, the world.
A similar result took place in 1972. It was George McGovern who first spotted the potential of direct mail in a Presidential campaign. More accurately, his direct-mail operative, Morris Dees, spotted it. The pre-convention McGovern campaign was made possible by Dees’ direct-mail skills.
As far as Presidential politics goes, three technologies have undermined the Establishment’s monopoly: the mass-produced paperback book (1964), direct mail (1972), and the Internet (2004). The Presidential candidate who first made the Internet work for him was Howard Dean, whose pre-convention campaign in 2004 was entirely based on the Internet. He raised over $40 million, but then squandered both the money and his lead by a lack of local organization in the primaries.
On all media fronts except direct mail, liberals are falling behind. Network news shows have steadily declined in popularity. Cable TV is replacing the networks, which includes network news. Newspaper readership has fallen like a stone since 1993. In 1993, 58% of Americans said that they had read a newspaper "yesterday." In 2002, this percentage was 41%. Three-quarters of Americans under age 30 do not read a newspaper daily. In the 30–49 age group, it is 37%. Liberals have bet the political farm on capital-intensive technologies and government regulation of the communications industry. They are losing the bet. The best book on all this is by Richard Viguerie and David Franke: America’s Right Turn: How Conservatives Used New and Alternative Media to Take Power.
Now Ron Paul is assembling a digital mailing list, or multiple lists, that will be used to educate and motivate hard-core supporters. It is under the radar of the Establishment.
COMMITMENT
It is clear to all sides that Ron Paul is the most ideologically committed politician in the country. There has been nothing like him since Howard Buffett retired in the early 1950’s. Nobody remembers Howard Buffett today except hard-core libertarians and his son, Warren.
It is Ron Paul’s uniquely consistent voting record that gets him on liberal-left television talk shows like the Daily Show and Bill Maher’s show. The hosts are willing to give him time on camera because he opposed the Iraq war when nobody else did. He has also voted to shrink the state ever since he was elected in 1976. While they don’t share his view of domestic policy, they are respectful to find any politician who just will not toe the Party line.
For years, he had a narrow but highly committed audience. Now, after three decades, he is beginning to expand that audience. He speaks his mind, and his mind is informed by a consistent philosophy of limited government, meaning Constitutional government as understood in 1788. The kinds of voters who sit through an evening of bloviating politicos and then go to a web page to vote are the kinds of people he is attracting.
These mailing lists, if used to educate people to the principles of limited civil government and expanded self-government, will begin to affect the next generation of voters.
It does not take postage to mail e-letters. It does not take printers, ink, and paper.
He has been committed to a worldview. No other politician is to the same degree. By being committed at the cost of risking electoral defeat, Ron Paul can now attract people who are looking for their own areas of commitment.
If he gets this message to his subscribers, he can help them become active in a movement to shrink the strangling hand of tax-funded bureaucracy.
CONCLUSION
Ron Paul is convinced that self-government is the wave of the future. Empire isn’t. That was Gandhi’s message in 1915. It did not seem plausible back then. By 1947, it did.
It has taken until quite recently for India to move economically more toward self-government and away from Nehru’s Fabian socialism. Sadly, the U.S. economy seems to be moving back toward Nehru. The state keeps getting bigger in the visible affairs of this world. But a great decentralization is taking place: in education, on the Internet, and with technology generally. The wave of the future is not toward Fabianism and its legacy. Ron Paul’s campaign is proof of this.
So, let us sit back and enjoy the campaign.
Monday
INTERVIEW
What's your response to those who say you're not electable?
The idea of who is not electable is subjective. It's early. No one knows, and only one candidate will win, so everyone else will turn out to be not electable.
The nomination is completely open now because the party is in disarray, the base is unhappy and I offer them an alternative and a return to their tradition of true conservativism. I think I'm quite electable. I'm not placing any bets, but to argue that I'm not electable is just trying to dismiss someone they don't want to hear from. It's more rhetoric than anything else.
Do you believe in open borders? That's the libertarian position, after all.
Some libertarians believe in totally open borders. I don't. Remember, I was the Libertarian Party's candidate for president in 1988, and I ran as a right-to-life Libertarian. I don't support totally open borders because, although I think the federal government should be small, protecting borders and providing for national defense – which excludes occupying other countries – are two of its legitimate functions. I would beef up the borders and not worry about the borders in Korea and Iraq. It's ironic that we're taking border guards off our borders and paying them to go and train border guards over there. I do understand the libertarian argument. The more we deal with our neighbors, the better off we are. I like the idea of trade. I like the idea of free travel and friendship. When that happens, you're less likely to fight. But that doesn't mean anyone can come in and get easy citizenship.
My biggest argument is different than those who want to shoot anyone crossing the border. When you subsizide things, you get more of it, and we subsidize immigration. We need to stop that. I want to deny the benefits that draw people here.
Do you find the dichotomy between the excitement about your campaign on the Internet and the silence about it in the mainstream media to be a little strange?
I don't see it completely. I think that might be true of the three or four major networks, but on the national talk shows, the Bill Maher and John Stewart-type shows, we're getting a lot of invitations. I don't think we'd have that if we didn't have the Internet excitement. If we continue to do well, they'll be forced to follow and give us more attention. This is true of a lot of things; a lot of stories break on the Internet. The networks are usually pretty slow on picking up what's happening.
Do you think the endorsement of Rush Limbaugh would win you the nomination?
Oh, I don't think so.
Some Republicans criticize you for opposing the ongoing military occupations, since that's supposed to be a Democratic position.
There are some Democrats who oppose the war, although I oppose it in a different manner. But they argue about tactics, my objections are strategic, philosophical and constitutional. The big debate recently was about whether you have a surge or not, I want to change the whole debate and not get involved in these insane alliances in the first place. There's a lot of arguments that support my position on non-intervention.
What is your opinion on intellectual property? Does it even exist?
I think it's a complex issue. I think of the protection of inventions and copyright as a legitimate function of the government. It gets really complex when you get into the international aspects, though, it has to be worked out by a reasonable discussion between these countries. Ideas themselves, like the internal combustion engine, can't be kept away from the world because ideas will always spread. I think it's open for discussion, but writing one law that fits the whole world isn't possible.
Do you think the Libertarian Party is moving towards a pro-life position?
I don't think it's as a divisive issue as a lot of people think it is in the Libertarian Party. A lot of people would just as soon the position doesn't exist. I use a libertarian argument to argue against abortion. Every Libertarian Party member takes an oath against aggression. But if you take a four or five pound fetus and kill it, if that's not agression, what is? Right now, the definitions are difficult, both the medical and legal definitions. I think that's why you have the pro- and anti-abortion sides. If we don't resolve the difference between one minute before birth and one minute after, we'll have difficulty defending political liberty. Under our law now, I can get paid for killing a child a minute before its birth and go to prison for doing it the minute after its birth.
What are the first five things you'd do if elected President?
There's some things you'd like to do but you can't necessarily do all five things in one day. You have to work within the system. On the big things, I'd reduce spending enough to get rid of the income tax and the IRS. I'd change our monetary policy so the Federal Reserve couldn't create money out of thin air, causing problems like inflation, investment bubbles and the ups and downs of the business cycle. One thing the president definitely can do on his own is that I'd immediately start bringing our troops home from around the world. I'd also stop building up missile sites and antagonizing the Russians. The biggest thing would be to get Congress to balance the budget, and we could do that if we were willing to give up on this foreign policy where we're spending hundreds of billions of dollars and getting nothing for it.
Of course, there's a lot more things that we're doing now that I would stop doing. I would never violate habeus corpus, the violation of which has now been legalized. I'd be very cautious not to violate the liberties of the American people. But you can only do what there is a consensus for doing, action requires the cooperation of Congress and the American people.
As a member of Congress, have you seen any evidence of attempts to merge the USA with Mexico and Canada?
I think they're working diligently for it and that's why this administration is weak. They don't even believe in national sovereignty. It started with NAFTA, then SPP and now they're moving to take the next step with this immigration bill. They're going to advance that effort to put the three countries together and have a single currency. Now that's something a president could do, is to let people know what plans have been made and express objection to it. I would work strongly against the NAU, the whole notion that we should have a single currency is frightening. There was a universal money once, it was called the gold standard, but when you have paper money in its place, that's where all the mischief comes from.
Do you think being the only non-interventionist Republican helps your campaign?
I would think so. Of course, I see the philosophy as being very popular and common-sensical and people would respond to it. People like the message of the free enterprise system and letting people run their own lives with privacy. They are responding very favorably to minding our own business and besides, we can't afford it. It's very viable and could compete with any of them.
The idea of who is not electable is subjective. It's early. No one knows, and only one candidate will win, so everyone else will turn out to be not electable.
The nomination is completely open now because the party is in disarray, the base is unhappy and I offer them an alternative and a return to their tradition of true conservativism. I think I'm quite electable. I'm not placing any bets, but to argue that I'm not electable is just trying to dismiss someone they don't want to hear from. It's more rhetoric than anything else.
Do you believe in open borders? That's the libertarian position, after all.
Some libertarians believe in totally open borders. I don't. Remember, I was the Libertarian Party's candidate for president in 1988, and I ran as a right-to-life Libertarian. I don't support totally open borders because, although I think the federal government should be small, protecting borders and providing for national defense – which excludes occupying other countries – are two of its legitimate functions. I would beef up the borders and not worry about the borders in Korea and Iraq. It's ironic that we're taking border guards off our borders and paying them to go and train border guards over there. I do understand the libertarian argument. The more we deal with our neighbors, the better off we are. I like the idea of trade. I like the idea of free travel and friendship. When that happens, you're less likely to fight. But that doesn't mean anyone can come in and get easy citizenship.
My biggest argument is different than those who want to shoot anyone crossing the border. When you subsizide things, you get more of it, and we subsidize immigration. We need to stop that. I want to deny the benefits that draw people here.
Do you find the dichotomy between the excitement about your campaign on the Internet and the silence about it in the mainstream media to be a little strange?
I don't see it completely. I think that might be true of the three or four major networks, but on the national talk shows, the Bill Maher and John Stewart-type shows, we're getting a lot of invitations. I don't think we'd have that if we didn't have the Internet excitement. If we continue to do well, they'll be forced to follow and give us more attention. This is true of a lot of things; a lot of stories break on the Internet. The networks are usually pretty slow on picking up what's happening.
Do you think the endorsement of Rush Limbaugh would win you the nomination?
Oh, I don't think so.
Some Republicans criticize you for opposing the ongoing military occupations, since that's supposed to be a Democratic position.
There are some Democrats who oppose the war, although I oppose it in a different manner. But they argue about tactics, my objections are strategic, philosophical and constitutional. The big debate recently was about whether you have a surge or not, I want to change the whole debate and not get involved in these insane alliances in the first place. There's a lot of arguments that support my position on non-intervention.
What is your opinion on intellectual property? Does it even exist?
I think it's a complex issue. I think of the protection of inventions and copyright as a legitimate function of the government. It gets really complex when you get into the international aspects, though, it has to be worked out by a reasonable discussion between these countries. Ideas themselves, like the internal combustion engine, can't be kept away from the world because ideas will always spread. I think it's open for discussion, but writing one law that fits the whole world isn't possible.
Do you think the Libertarian Party is moving towards a pro-life position?
I don't think it's as a divisive issue as a lot of people think it is in the Libertarian Party. A lot of people would just as soon the position doesn't exist. I use a libertarian argument to argue against abortion. Every Libertarian Party member takes an oath against aggression. But if you take a four or five pound fetus and kill it, if that's not agression, what is? Right now, the definitions are difficult, both the medical and legal definitions. I think that's why you have the pro- and anti-abortion sides. If we don't resolve the difference between one minute before birth and one minute after, we'll have difficulty defending political liberty. Under our law now, I can get paid for killing a child a minute before its birth and go to prison for doing it the minute after its birth.
What are the first five things you'd do if elected President?
There's some things you'd like to do but you can't necessarily do all five things in one day. You have to work within the system. On the big things, I'd reduce spending enough to get rid of the income tax and the IRS. I'd change our monetary policy so the Federal Reserve couldn't create money out of thin air, causing problems like inflation, investment bubbles and the ups and downs of the business cycle. One thing the president definitely can do on his own is that I'd immediately start bringing our troops home from around the world. I'd also stop building up missile sites and antagonizing the Russians. The biggest thing would be to get Congress to balance the budget, and we could do that if we were willing to give up on this foreign policy where we're spending hundreds of billions of dollars and getting nothing for it.
Of course, there's a lot more things that we're doing now that I would stop doing. I would never violate habeus corpus, the violation of which has now been legalized. I'd be very cautious not to violate the liberties of the American people. But you can only do what there is a consensus for doing, action requires the cooperation of Congress and the American people.
As a member of Congress, have you seen any evidence of attempts to merge the USA with Mexico and Canada?
I think they're working diligently for it and that's why this administration is weak. They don't even believe in national sovereignty. It started with NAFTA, then SPP and now they're moving to take the next step with this immigration bill. They're going to advance that effort to put the three countries together and have a single currency. Now that's something a president could do, is to let people know what plans have been made and express objection to it. I would work strongly against the NAU, the whole notion that we should have a single currency is frightening. There was a universal money once, it was called the gold standard, but when you have paper money in its place, that's where all the mischief comes from.
Do you think being the only non-interventionist Republican helps your campaign?
I would think so. Of course, I see the philosophy as being very popular and common-sensical and people would respond to it. People like the message of the free enterprise system and letting people run their own lives with privacy. They are responding very favorably to minding our own business and besides, we can't afford it. It's very viable and could compete with any of them.
WHAT I THINK....KAREN DE COSTER
I do believe that Ron Paul has a chance to win this election. Is that too optimistic?
This election, thus far, is amazing. Never before has a presidential campaign picked up so much velocity, so early, and grabbed the attention of the politically-addicted populace – nearly a year-and-a-half before the actual vote. Thanks to the innumerable screw-ups on the part of Herr Bush in the Middle East, a guy like Ron Paul is being welcomed by freedom junkies because he offers something that no other candidate can offer: intellectual honesty instead of rehearsed responses; candid analysis as opposed to political power mongering; and from-the-guts truth in place of phony, popularity-driven pandering.
I admit to being a freedom junkie, and count myself among those who will follow every news clip, every debate, and each YouTube moment that surrounds the presidential race with the hope that this elegant, articulate man of principle – Ron Paul – will have the opportunity to bring to the masses a sense of hope for the restoration of a free-trade, non-interventionist American republic. Ron Paul is a political rock star of the Internet. He plays lead guitar and sings liberty lyrics while the audience swoons. He wins over young people because he symbolizes, for them, a vibrant and productive future wherein they – not the government – will control their own destiny. He also wins over the older folks who understand the difference between Paul’s emphasis on the individual and the family, as opposed to the prevailing model of mob-rules, democratic totalitarianism. And most of all, he dares to question the current political administration’s policies in conducting its illegitimate war.
Speaking of the "older folks," my Dad is 81 and a computer geek. At about age 74, he bought a hand-built, ABS computer, and has since become an Internet frequent flyer, running up about a gazillion miles of surfing. If only he was 30 years younger, surely he’d be running Linux, building servers, dissing Microsoft, and indulging in open-source creativity. Several years ago, he sent me a link to a Ron Paul column on LewRockwell.com, asking "Have you ever heard of him?" Of course I had, but he didn’t know that at the time. A column by Dr. Paul on the Federal Reserve had grabbed the attention of this man who clearly understood the dangers of centralization and financial socialism.
My Dad is a first-generation American – his parents and older siblings emigrated from West Flanders, Belgium in the 1920s. I still hold the Ellis Island certificates. A natural libertarian and a 1980’s Reagan Democrat from Macomb County (as so named by pollster Stanley Greenberg), the Internet – with all its glorious avenues for self-exploration and knowledge – propelled my father from being a culturally conservative individualist and limited-state guy to a full-blown, antiwar libertarian.
You see, my father was not quite 19 when he was sent off to Europe where he found himself an infantry soldier in the Battle of the Bulge – in Patton’s Third Army. He survived the bloodiest battle of WWII, and spent many evenings at the dinner table reciting tales of the horrors he encountered as a young, volunteer soldier freezing in foxholes in the Ardennes. I asked a whole lot of questions, because, as a youngster, I never really understood why America fought that war.
As a veteran of military combat, my father understands the true nature of war and its ultimate intentions – the establishment of imperial control and the building up of political power structures. When he was killing German soldiers he felt remorse over the fact that he was ending the life of other young men – brothers and sons like him – who were caught up in the machinations of warfare for the purpose of political supremacy that benefited no one beyond the empowered leaders. In fact, he once told me that he and the men in his unit – in spite of their lack of access to accurate news – would sit around and ask: what in the hell are we doing being allied with Stalin and the Soviet Union?
As a very young child I remember all of the young men in my neighborhood being yanked from their homes and jobs because their draft notices had arrived in the mail. I had a brother that joined the Army during the Vietnam era and another that got lucky and didn’t get the call for military slavery. I do remember those boys in the neighborhood when they came home – they were more distant, less social, and the adults would remark that "the war changed them." The images I saw on TV reeked of mayhem and horror. I watched the protest coverage with great interest. I remember thinking that each time I saw Richard Nixon he resembled a deer in the headlights. With the six-o’clock news on the tube each night at the dinner table, my parents raged against the war, thinking that maybe, just maybe, Nixon really could end the mess after all. Those discussions were a big part of my education in critical thinking. The best part is this – although my father influenced my ideological outlook early in my life, many years later I returned the favor and influenced him.
For much of my generation, George Bush Sr.’s war was a major turning point. The first war on Iraq is what convinced me that imperial ambitions had taken a front seat in the drive toward foreign policy insanity. That was the point where I went from being a war disbeliever to one who developed an entire principled case against war and the military occupation of other nations.
These days, watching Ron Paul on TV reminds me of that time, during the Vietnam era, when I discovered that family hour could consist of something better than bad sitcoms, government-sponsored commercials, or state-controlled news. His magnificent TV and Internet presence has terrified the fair-and-balanced crowd, and in fact, they have schemed to keep him from the public eye. However, his booming popularity among the left, the antiwar, the young, the Bush-haters, and the Internet surfers makes him a difficult horse to put down quietly. This is why he must prevail long enough to educate Americans on the libertarian roots that are at the foundation of this country’s greatest traditions. He makes me hope that, once again, families can sit around and discuss the news, and even challenge the prevailing opinion amongst each other. If his presidential run can accomplish that alone, then he has made a significant and lasting contribution to America’s future.
For a few weeks now, my father has been in a hospital, and I have had to come to grip with the fact that his life will never quite be the same. The other day my mother called me from his room to put him on the phone, telling me he couldn’t talk very well, but he could listen. He has long been a daily reader of LewRockwell.com and a huge supporter of Ron Paul and his agenda for liberty. So I updated him on the Ron Paul storm that was sweeping his beloved Internet, and I told him what had transpired in the presidential debates that he didn’t have the opportunity to watch. I couldn’t understand much of what he was saying, except I did catch the two most important things: "Hillary or Obama will be a disaster," and "We need a man like Ron Paul." Considering his condition, I couldn’t have been more pleased.
That day reminded me of how I am so blessed to have been given the opportunity to observe and learn from a real role model, my father – not a sports star or rock musician or Hollywood tramp. He taught me to look deep into the subject matter and probe for that which is concealed beneath the veneer of propaganda. He never told me what to think; he only wanted me to think.
And indeed, that’s what Dr. Paul is doing for Americans. By virtue of his presence, his intelligence, and his unshakable commitment to the unpopular truth, he is educating people on what it means to think. That is why I think his candidacy – whether or not he wins – will be a successful and historic occasion for all of us to celebrate.
This election, thus far, is amazing. Never before has a presidential campaign picked up so much velocity, so early, and grabbed the attention of the politically-addicted populace – nearly a year-and-a-half before the actual vote. Thanks to the innumerable screw-ups on the part of Herr Bush in the Middle East, a guy like Ron Paul is being welcomed by freedom junkies because he offers something that no other candidate can offer: intellectual honesty instead of rehearsed responses; candid analysis as opposed to political power mongering; and from-the-guts truth in place of phony, popularity-driven pandering.
I admit to being a freedom junkie, and count myself among those who will follow every news clip, every debate, and each YouTube moment that surrounds the presidential race with the hope that this elegant, articulate man of principle – Ron Paul – will have the opportunity to bring to the masses a sense of hope for the restoration of a free-trade, non-interventionist American republic. Ron Paul is a political rock star of the Internet. He plays lead guitar and sings liberty lyrics while the audience swoons. He wins over young people because he symbolizes, for them, a vibrant and productive future wherein they – not the government – will control their own destiny. He also wins over the older folks who understand the difference between Paul’s emphasis on the individual and the family, as opposed to the prevailing model of mob-rules, democratic totalitarianism. And most of all, he dares to question the current political administration’s policies in conducting its illegitimate war.
Speaking of the "older folks," my Dad is 81 and a computer geek. At about age 74, he bought a hand-built, ABS computer, and has since become an Internet frequent flyer, running up about a gazillion miles of surfing. If only he was 30 years younger, surely he’d be running Linux, building servers, dissing Microsoft, and indulging in open-source creativity. Several years ago, he sent me a link to a Ron Paul column on LewRockwell.com, asking "Have you ever heard of him?" Of course I had, but he didn’t know that at the time. A column by Dr. Paul on the Federal Reserve had grabbed the attention of this man who clearly understood the dangers of centralization and financial socialism.
My Dad is a first-generation American – his parents and older siblings emigrated from West Flanders, Belgium in the 1920s. I still hold the Ellis Island certificates. A natural libertarian and a 1980’s Reagan Democrat from Macomb County (as so named by pollster Stanley Greenberg), the Internet – with all its glorious avenues for self-exploration and knowledge – propelled my father from being a culturally conservative individualist and limited-state guy to a full-blown, antiwar libertarian.
You see, my father was not quite 19 when he was sent off to Europe where he found himself an infantry soldier in the Battle of the Bulge – in Patton’s Third Army. He survived the bloodiest battle of WWII, and spent many evenings at the dinner table reciting tales of the horrors he encountered as a young, volunteer soldier freezing in foxholes in the Ardennes. I asked a whole lot of questions, because, as a youngster, I never really understood why America fought that war.
As a veteran of military combat, my father understands the true nature of war and its ultimate intentions – the establishment of imperial control and the building up of political power structures. When he was killing German soldiers he felt remorse over the fact that he was ending the life of other young men – brothers and sons like him – who were caught up in the machinations of warfare for the purpose of political supremacy that benefited no one beyond the empowered leaders. In fact, he once told me that he and the men in his unit – in spite of their lack of access to accurate news – would sit around and ask: what in the hell are we doing being allied with Stalin and the Soviet Union?
As a very young child I remember all of the young men in my neighborhood being yanked from their homes and jobs because their draft notices had arrived in the mail. I had a brother that joined the Army during the Vietnam era and another that got lucky and didn’t get the call for military slavery. I do remember those boys in the neighborhood when they came home – they were more distant, less social, and the adults would remark that "the war changed them." The images I saw on TV reeked of mayhem and horror. I watched the protest coverage with great interest. I remember thinking that each time I saw Richard Nixon he resembled a deer in the headlights. With the six-o’clock news on the tube each night at the dinner table, my parents raged against the war, thinking that maybe, just maybe, Nixon really could end the mess after all. Those discussions were a big part of my education in critical thinking. The best part is this – although my father influenced my ideological outlook early in my life, many years later I returned the favor and influenced him.
For much of my generation, George Bush Sr.’s war was a major turning point. The first war on Iraq is what convinced me that imperial ambitions had taken a front seat in the drive toward foreign policy insanity. That was the point where I went from being a war disbeliever to one who developed an entire principled case against war and the military occupation of other nations.
These days, watching Ron Paul on TV reminds me of that time, during the Vietnam era, when I discovered that family hour could consist of something better than bad sitcoms, government-sponsored commercials, or state-controlled news. His magnificent TV and Internet presence has terrified the fair-and-balanced crowd, and in fact, they have schemed to keep him from the public eye. However, his booming popularity among the left, the antiwar, the young, the Bush-haters, and the Internet surfers makes him a difficult horse to put down quietly. This is why he must prevail long enough to educate Americans on the libertarian roots that are at the foundation of this country’s greatest traditions. He makes me hope that, once again, families can sit around and discuss the news, and even challenge the prevailing opinion amongst each other. If his presidential run can accomplish that alone, then he has made a significant and lasting contribution to America’s future.
For a few weeks now, my father has been in a hospital, and I have had to come to grip with the fact that his life will never quite be the same. The other day my mother called me from his room to put him on the phone, telling me he couldn’t talk very well, but he could listen. He has long been a daily reader of LewRockwell.com and a huge supporter of Ron Paul and his agenda for liberty. So I updated him on the Ron Paul storm that was sweeping his beloved Internet, and I told him what had transpired in the presidential debates that he didn’t have the opportunity to watch. I couldn’t understand much of what he was saying, except I did catch the two most important things: "Hillary or Obama will be a disaster," and "We need a man like Ron Paul." Considering his condition, I couldn’t have been more pleased.
That day reminded me of how I am so blessed to have been given the opportunity to observe and learn from a real role model, my father – not a sports star or rock musician or Hollywood tramp. He taught me to look deep into the subject matter and probe for that which is concealed beneath the veneer of propaganda. He never told me what to think; he only wanted me to think.
And indeed, that’s what Dr. Paul is doing for Americans. By virtue of his presence, his intelligence, and his unshakable commitment to the unpopular truth, he is educating people on what it means to think. That is why I think his candidacy – whether or not he wins – will be a successful and historic occasion for all of us to celebrate.
EARMARK VICTORY MAY BE A HOLLOW ONE
Last week's big battle on the House floor over earmarks in the annual appropriations bills was won by Republicans, who succeeded in getting the Democratic leadership to agree to clearly identify each earmark in the future. While this is certainly a victory for more transparency and openness in the spending process, and as such should be applauded, I am concerned that this may not necessarily be a victory for those of us who want a smaller federal government.
Though much attention is focused on the notorious abuses of earmarking, and there are plenty of examples, in fact even if all earmarks were eliminated we would not necessary save a single penny in the federal budget. Because earmarks are funded from spending levels that have been determined before a single earmark is agreed to, with or without earmarks the spending levels remain the same. Eliminating earmarks designated by Members of Congress would simply transfer the funding decision process to federal bureaucrats rather then elected representatives. In an already flawed system, earmarks can at least allow residents of Congressional districts to have a greater role in allocating federal funds - their tax dollars - than if the money is allocated behind locked doors by bureaucrats. So we can be critical of the abuses in the current system but we shouldn't lose sight of how some reforms may not actually make the system much better.
The real problem, and one that was unfortunately not addressed in last week's earmark dispute, is the size of the federal government and the amount of money we are spending in these appropriations bills. Even cutting a few thousand or even a million dollars from a multi-hundred billion dollar appropriation bill will not really shrink the size of government.
So there is a danger that small-government conservatives will look at this small victory for transparency and forget the much larger and more difficult battle of returning the United States government to spending levels more in line with its constitutional functions. Without taking a serious look at the actual total spending in these appropriations bills, we will miss the real threat to our economic security. Failed government agencies like FEMA will still get tens of billions of dollars to mismanage when the next disaster strikes. Corrupt foreign governments will still be lavishly funded with dollars taken from working Americans to prop up their regimes. The United Nations will still receive its generous annual tribute taken from the American taxpayer. Americans will still be forced to pay for elaborate military bases to protect borders overseas while our own borders remain porous and unguarded. These are the real issues we must address when we look at reforming our yearly spending extravaganza called the appropriations season.
So we need to focus on the longer term and more difficult task of reducing the total size of the federal budget and the federal government and to return government to its constitutional functions. We should not confuse this welcome victory for transparency in the earmarking process with a victory in our long-term goal of this reduction in government taxing and spending.
Though much attention is focused on the notorious abuses of earmarking, and there are plenty of examples, in fact even if all earmarks were eliminated we would not necessary save a single penny in the federal budget. Because earmarks are funded from spending levels that have been determined before a single earmark is agreed to, with or without earmarks the spending levels remain the same. Eliminating earmarks designated by Members of Congress would simply transfer the funding decision process to federal bureaucrats rather then elected representatives. In an already flawed system, earmarks can at least allow residents of Congressional districts to have a greater role in allocating federal funds - their tax dollars - than if the money is allocated behind locked doors by bureaucrats. So we can be critical of the abuses in the current system but we shouldn't lose sight of how some reforms may not actually make the system much better.
The real problem, and one that was unfortunately not addressed in last week's earmark dispute, is the size of the federal government and the amount of money we are spending in these appropriations bills. Even cutting a few thousand or even a million dollars from a multi-hundred billion dollar appropriation bill will not really shrink the size of government.
So there is a danger that small-government conservatives will look at this small victory for transparency and forget the much larger and more difficult battle of returning the United States government to spending levels more in line with its constitutional functions. Without taking a serious look at the actual total spending in these appropriations bills, we will miss the real threat to our economic security. Failed government agencies like FEMA will still get tens of billions of dollars to mismanage when the next disaster strikes. Corrupt foreign governments will still be lavishly funded with dollars taken from working Americans to prop up their regimes. The United Nations will still receive its generous annual tribute taken from the American taxpayer. Americans will still be forced to pay for elaborate military bases to protect borders overseas while our own borders remain porous and unguarded. These are the real issues we must address when we look at reforming our yearly spending extravaganza called the appropriations season.
So we need to focus on the longer term and more difficult task of reducing the total size of the federal budget and the federal government and to return government to its constitutional functions. We should not confuse this welcome victory for transparency in the earmarking process with a victory in our long-term goal of this reduction in government taxing and spending.
Tuesday
AMNESTY OPPONENTS ARE NOT UN-AMERICAN
Although action in the United States Senate this week has slowed passage of the amnesty bill, it is not yet dead as President Bush remains committed to this approach. That is why the President recently suggested that those of us who oppose amnesty for illegal immigrants are unpatriotic. Those of us who strongly oppose the new immigration reform bill before the Senate “don't want to do what's right for America ,” the president said. I reject that assessment as unfair and inaccurate.
Supporters of the amnesty bill like to claim that border protection is their first priority. But if enforcement of our borders is the highest priority, certainly a much shorter bill could have been written. Even better, why not enforce existing laws? According to our Constitution, Congress makes the laws that the executive branch is to enforce. The rush to pass this new law seems to obfuscate this simple fact. There are plenty of laws already in place, so it seems sensible to largely solve this problem without new laws.
To make matters worse, as I wrote in a recent column, some 120 of our best trained border guards are going to be sent to Iraq to help them with border enforcement! In addition, National Guard troops participating in Operation Jump Start on the Mexican border are scheduled to also be sent to Iraq and Afghanistan .
This legislation purports to crack down hard at our borders, but as we have learned time and time again, you cannot address enforcement until you address incentives. That is why you cannot have border security with an amnesty program in place: the incentive of amnesty undermines any crack-down on border protection and in fact just makes work for our Border Patrol all the more difficult. Incentives in place to those who would come to the United States illegally will remain in place if this legislation is passed. Illegal immigrants will still receive federal assistance and free medical care and their children will still gain automatic citizenship after this bill is passed. We need to face the fact that securing our borders means more than legislation, or fences, or even more Border Patrol. It means removing incentives for people to come to the US illegally in the first place. That is why I will once again introduce an amendment to the Constitution to end birthright citizenship this coming week.
Although the “reform” of immigration in the amnesty bill is enough to cause alarm, other highly troubling provisions are tucked away that will serve to undermine our sovereignty and weaken our civil liberties. According to the most recent version of the Senate bill, the misnamed Security and Prosperity Partnership for North America is to be “accelerated.” It seems ironic that a project aiming to actually weaken US borders with Mexico and Canada would be added into a bill that purports to toughen border controls.
Also, this bill will bring us closer to a national ID card, which without a doubt runs counter to American values and history and will punish American citizens without doing much to counter those who would come here illegally.
I strongly disagree with the president that opposing this legislation is unpatriotic. I believe we have an obligation to reject any legislation that promises amnesty to those here illegally, and that undermines the sovereignty and privacy of American citizens.
Supporters of the amnesty bill like to claim that border protection is their first priority. But if enforcement of our borders is the highest priority, certainly a much shorter bill could have been written. Even better, why not enforce existing laws? According to our Constitution, Congress makes the laws that the executive branch is to enforce. The rush to pass this new law seems to obfuscate this simple fact. There are plenty of laws already in place, so it seems sensible to largely solve this problem without new laws.
To make matters worse, as I wrote in a recent column, some 120 of our best trained border guards are going to be sent to Iraq to help them with border enforcement! In addition, National Guard troops participating in Operation Jump Start on the Mexican border are scheduled to also be sent to Iraq and Afghanistan .
This legislation purports to crack down hard at our borders, but as we have learned time and time again, you cannot address enforcement until you address incentives. That is why you cannot have border security with an amnesty program in place: the incentive of amnesty undermines any crack-down on border protection and in fact just makes work for our Border Patrol all the more difficult. Incentives in place to those who would come to the United States illegally will remain in place if this legislation is passed. Illegal immigrants will still receive federal assistance and free medical care and their children will still gain automatic citizenship after this bill is passed. We need to face the fact that securing our borders means more than legislation, or fences, or even more Border Patrol. It means removing incentives for people to come to the US illegally in the first place. That is why I will once again introduce an amendment to the Constitution to end birthright citizenship this coming week.
Although the “reform” of immigration in the amnesty bill is enough to cause alarm, other highly troubling provisions are tucked away that will serve to undermine our sovereignty and weaken our civil liberties. According to the most recent version of the Senate bill, the misnamed Security and Prosperity Partnership for North America is to be “accelerated.” It seems ironic that a project aiming to actually weaken US borders with Mexico and Canada would be added into a bill that purports to toughen border controls.
Also, this bill will bring us closer to a national ID card, which without a doubt runs counter to American values and history and will punish American citizens without doing much to counter those who would come here illegally.
I strongly disagree with the president that opposing this legislation is unpatriotic. I believe we have an obligation to reject any legislation that promises amnesty to those here illegally, and that undermines the sovereignty and privacy of American citizens.
Saturday
Friday
Tuesday
THE PRICE OF DELAYING THE INEVITABLE IN IRAQ
Good intentions frequently lead to unintended bad consequences. Tough choices, doing what is right, often leads to unanticipated good results.
The growing demand by the American people for us to leave Iraq prompts the naysayers to predict disaster in the Middle East if we do. Of course, these merchants of fear are the same ones who predicted that invading and occupying Iraq would be a slam dunk operation; that we would be welcomed as liberators, and oil revenues would pay for the operation with minimal loss of American lives.
All of this hyperbole came while ignoring the precise warnings by our intelligence community of the great difficulties that would lie ahead. The chaos that this preemptive, undeclared war has created in Iraq has allowed the Al Qaida to establish a foothold in Iraq and the strategic interests of Iran to be served.
The unintended consequences have been numerous. A well-intended but flawed policy that ignored credible warnings of how things could go awry has produced conditions that have led to a war dominated by procrastination, without victory or resolution in sight.
Those who want a total military victory, which no one has yet defined, don’t have the troops, the money, the equipment or the support of a large majority of the American people to do so.
Those in Congress who have heard the cry of the electorate to end the war refuse to do so out of fear, the demagogues will challenge their patriotism and support of the troops so nothing happens except more of the same. The result is continued stalemate with the current policy and the daily sacrifice of American lives.
This wait and see attitude in Washington, and the promised reassessment of events in Iraq later on, strongly motivates the insurgents to accelerate the killing of Americans in order to influence the decision coming in three months. In contrast, a clear decision to leave would prompt a wait and see attitude in Iraq, a de facto cease fire, in anticipation of our leaving, the perfect time for the Iraqi factions to hold their fire on each other and on our troops and just possibly begin talking with each other.
Most Americans do not anticipate a military victory in Iraq , yet the Washington politicians remain frozen in their unwillingness to change our policy there, fearful of the dire predictions that conditions can only get worse when we leave. They refuse to admit that the condition of foreign occupation is the key ingredient that unleashed the civil war now raging in Iraq and serves as a recruitment device for Al Qaida.
It’s time for a change in our foreign policy.
The growing demand by the American people for us to leave Iraq prompts the naysayers to predict disaster in the Middle East if we do. Of course, these merchants of fear are the same ones who predicted that invading and occupying Iraq would be a slam dunk operation; that we would be welcomed as liberators, and oil revenues would pay for the operation with minimal loss of American lives.
All of this hyperbole came while ignoring the precise warnings by our intelligence community of the great difficulties that would lie ahead. The chaos that this preemptive, undeclared war has created in Iraq has allowed the Al Qaida to establish a foothold in Iraq and the strategic interests of Iran to be served.
The unintended consequences have been numerous. A well-intended but flawed policy that ignored credible warnings of how things could go awry has produced conditions that have led to a war dominated by procrastination, without victory or resolution in sight.
Those who want a total military victory, which no one has yet defined, don’t have the troops, the money, the equipment or the support of a large majority of the American people to do so.
Those in Congress who have heard the cry of the electorate to end the war refuse to do so out of fear, the demagogues will challenge their patriotism and support of the troops so nothing happens except more of the same. The result is continued stalemate with the current policy and the daily sacrifice of American lives.
This wait and see attitude in Washington, and the promised reassessment of events in Iraq later on, strongly motivates the insurgents to accelerate the killing of Americans in order to influence the decision coming in three months. In contrast, a clear decision to leave would prompt a wait and see attitude in Iraq, a de facto cease fire, in anticipation of our leaving, the perfect time for the Iraqi factions to hold their fire on each other and on our troops and just possibly begin talking with each other.
Most Americans do not anticipate a military victory in Iraq , yet the Washington politicians remain frozen in their unwillingness to change our policy there, fearful of the dire predictions that conditions can only get worse when we leave. They refuse to admit that the condition of foreign occupation is the key ingredient that unleashed the civil war now raging in Iraq and serves as a recruitment device for Al Qaida.
It’s time for a change in our foreign policy.
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