Even as a major hurricane hit America's eastern seaboard, the administration is determined to expand the war in Libya while threatening the regime in Syria. Is there any limit to government's appetite to create more problems for our nation and economy?
Americans may be tempted to celebrate the apparent victory of US and NATO backed rebels in Libya, since it seems the Gaddafi regime is overthrown. But I believe any enthusiasm for our Libyan misadventure is premature.
The Obama administration attacked Libya without a constitutional declaration of war, without congressional authorization, without meaningful consultation with Congress -- and without a dollar being authorized from the House or Senate. It was a war started by a president who turned to the United Nations for its authority and ignored the authority of the US Congress.
Are we better off as a nation by ignoring and debasing our Constitution? Are we better off having spent more than a billion dollars attacking a country thousands of miles away that had not threatened us? Are we more financially sound having expanded the empire to include yet another protectorate and probable long-term military occupation? Are we more admired throughout the world for getting involved in yet another war?
Still, many will claim that getting rid of Libyan ruler Gaddafi was worth it. They will say that the ends justify the means. As the civilian toll from NATO bombs adds up in a war started under the guise of protecting a civilian population, even the initial argument for intervention is ridiculous. We should not forget that there were no massacres taking place in Libya before the NATO attack. The attack was a dubbed a preventative humanitarian intervention. But as soon as NATO planes started bombing, civilians started dying.
Gaddafi may well have been a tyrant, but as such he was no worse than many others that we support and count as allies. Disturbingly, we see a pattern of relatively secular leaders in the Arab world being targeted for regime change with the resulting power vacuum being filled by much more radical elements. Iraq, post-Saddam, is certainly far closer to Iran than before the US invasion. Will Libya be any different?
We already see grisly reprisals from the US-backed rebels against their political opponents. There are disturbing scenes of looting and lawlessness on the part of the rebels. We know that some rebel factions appear to be allied with Islamic extremists and others seem to have ties to the CIA. They also appear to have a penchant for killing each other as well as supporters of the previous regime. The tribal structure of Libyan society all but ensures that an ongoing civil war is on the agenda rather than the Swiss-style democracy that some intervention advocates suggest is around the corner.
What is next after such a victory? With the big Western scramble to grab Libya's oil reserves amid domestic political chaos and violence, does anyone doubt that NATO ground troops are not being prepared for yet another occupation?
Neo-conservatives continue to dominate our foreign policy, regardless of the administration in power. They do not care that we are bankrupt, as they are too blinded by their desire for empire and their affection for the entangling alliances we have been rightly counseled to avoid. They have set their sights next on Syria, where the US moves steadily toward intervention in another domestic conflict that has nothing to do with the US. Already the US president has called for "regime change" in Syria, while adding new sanctions against the Syrian regime. Are US bombers far behind?
Monday
WHAT I THINK........JUSTIN RAIMONDO
I really feel sorry for Katherine Mangu-Ward: she walked into a hornet’s nest when she appeared on Fox News the other day and disparaged Ron Paul – or, rather, mocked his chances of winning the GOP presidential nomination. She might have thought she was merely expressing the Conventional Wisdom on Paul’s candidacy – which, indeed, she was – but her comments underscored an important point about how social change works, which I’ll get to in a moment. But first …
As senior editor of Reason magazine, an ostensibly libertarian publication, the Paulians rightly expected her to stand up for her team. Oddly, it was left to the other panelist, journalist and author Liz Trotta – not a libertarian, as far as I know – to defend Paul, and her defense was interesting: she said the wars are a bigger issue than anyone realizes, and since Paul is the only Republican candidate calling for an end to US intervention around the world, the issue could conceivably catapult him into the top tier. Mangu-Ward, a former staffer at the Weekly Standard, sat there and rolled her eyes, as if someone had suggested the moon is made of green cheese.
Immediately after her performance, a howl of outrage went up from the libertarian ranks, demanding Mangu-Ward’s head. “Fire her!” they demanded – indeed, so numerous and loud were the protests and subscription cancellations that Nick Gillespie, former editor-in-chief at Reason and now resident Talking Head, was forced to take to the Reason blog with a rather weak defense of his colleague’s faux pas. Since Reason’s slogan is “free markets and free minds,” averred Gillespie, their editors are free to say and write whatever they want. According to this theory, Mangu-Ward could predict the victory of the Socialist Party candidate, and not collect a pink slip. That this would never happen is irrelevant: Reason is a Beltway institution, although they still retain their office in Los Angeles, and Gillespie was simply defending his fellow Beltway pundit – and the Conventional Wisdom she gave voice to — against the mob of ignorant hoi polloi,
But why were the libertarian hoi polloi so angry? It was, I think, much more than the fact that one is supposed to defend one’s own tribe against external attack: after all, this isn’t the first time Reason has sneered at Ron Paul, who is so far removed from the trendy “lifestyle” issues the magazine loves to write about that the distance can only be measured in light years. The “cosmopolitan” wing of the libertarian movement has very little in common with the grassroots, and this is true for the simple reason that the “cosmotarians” nearly all live and work in Washington, D.C., where the tyranny of the Conventional Wisdom is strongest.
No one in the Imperial City, outside of Ron Paul and his staff, believes the Paul campaign is going anywhere, and, more – they don’t believe it can go anywhere but into the dustbin of yesterday’s failed campaigns. It is they – the self-appointed gatekeepers and guardians of the Conventional Wisdom – who define the parameters of the possible, and they have deemed a Paul presidency impossible because it goes against everything they’ve ever known and were taught to believe. Even the “libertarians” among them – and I use the term very loosely – are trapped inside this bubble where nothing much ever changes, and this means the State and its worshippers are always going to be on top, and the libertarian “radicals” (and their progressive brothers-and-sisters-in-spirit on the “far left”) are always going to be marginal. This ultra-conservative mindset – conservative in the temperamental sense – is a function not only of what the Beltway pundits believe, but, rather, of who they are and where they live.
They are intellectuals, albeit of the third or fourth tier, publicists, policy wonks – denizens of the Beltway subculture, where Power is at the center of everything. In these circles, one’s relationship to Power determines one’s social and professional standing, and the attainment of Power is the end-all and be-all of existence. If you’re not in Power, then you’re constantly angling and scheming to get back into Power. The role of libertarians in such a milieu is to act as the class clowns, or the Bad Kids – who are allowed a certain amount of leeway, but, in order to keep their jobs and their vaunted credibility, invariably police themselves so as to avoid expulsion from Olympus. Thus, the Beltway “libertarians” are allowed to play in their own sandbox, contenting themselves with extolling methamphetamine addiction and calling for the immediate importation of the entire Mexican population to Arizona – but beyond that they dare not stray. Thus, Reason stayed “neutral” – i.e. objectively pro-war – during the run up to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, running both pro and anti-war pieces as if the two held equal weight from a libertarian perspective. War is debatable over at Reason magazine, but the legalization of heroin and the sale of babies – not so much.
In any case, the really interesting part of all this – didn’t you know we’d get to the interesting part eventually? – is what it says about how differently the two main classes in American society see the possibilities of social change.
To us ordinary Americans, the hoi polloi if you will, the process of social and political change is simple: we get to decide if and when a political change occurs, because, you see, we have these events known as elections. Which means we get to pick and choose our leaders: if we don’t like the current occupant of the Oval Office, we can pitch him out and raise someone else up to take his place. It could be any native-born American in theory at least.
To the Beltway crowd – the elaborate society that has grown up around what can only be characterized as America’s version of a Royal Court – this is an archaic fiction, a theory that will never be put into practice. In reality, they believe, they get to do the choosing, by setting up the standards and nominating candidates to the “top tier.” From these chosen few will come the actual winners. Having jumped through all the traditional hoops, and survived the scrutiny of the various lobbyists, both foreign and domestic, the elite’s favored candidates will be dutifully rubberstamped by the American public, and two will emerge from the two state-privileged parties – one from Team Red, and one from Team Blue – to do battle. This way, no matter who wins, the status quo prevails unto eternity.
To our rulers in Washington, and their intellectual sycophants, their reign is slated to last practically forever. Sure, Team Red may take the throne White House next time, but that just means a few billion dollars less will be spread around at home and a few billion more will wind up in the pockets of military contractors and the Koch brothers. From the Beltway’s point of view, change on a fundamental level is not only undesirable – it’s impossible.
The reason has to do with the mindset of a certain sort of intellectual, best described by George Orwell in his treatment of James Burnham, a professor of philosophy and a figure who commanded some attention in intellectual circles in the late 1930s and early 40s. Burnham was a former leftist who switched over to the right after World War II, going on to become a founding editor of National Review. His 1941 book, The Managerial Revolution, made a splash when it appeared, prophesizing a German victory in Europe and the break-up of the USSR. Tracing the trajectory of Burnham’s mistaken predictions and ideological predilections, Orwell notes that whomever seems to be winning at the time – the Germans, when Burnham’s book was being written – is presented as if their victory was all but inevitable. Being proved wrong didn’t stop Burnham: after the war, he took to praising Stalin in an eerie essay for Partisan Review, “Lenin’s Heir” – just at the point when Stalin and FDR were divvying up the spoils of war in Central and Eastern Europe. As Orwell put it:
“Power worship blurs political judgement because it leads, almost unavoidably, to the belief that present trends will continue. Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible. If the Japanese have conquered south Asia, then they will keep south Asia for ever, if the Germans have captured Tobruk, they will infallibly capture Cairo; if the Russians are in Berlin, it will not be long before they are in London: and so on. This habit of mind leads also to the belief that things will happen more quickly, completely, and catastrophically than they ever do in practice. … Such a manner of thinking is bound to lead to mistaken prophecies, because, even when it gauges the direction of events rightly, it will miscalculate their tempo. Within the space of five years Burnham foretold the domination of Russia by Germany and of Germany by Russia. In each case he was obeying the same instinct: the instinct to bow down before the conqueror of the moment, to accept the existing trend as irreversible.”
Bowing before the conqueror of the moment is the leitmotif of life in official Washington, and it defines the limits of the possible. No one foresaw the implosion of the Soviet empire, including especially the Soviets and our own CIA – just as no one can imagine the decline and fall of the American empire, which Ron Paul has been predicting, now, for all the years he’s been in politics.
The incredible short-sightedness of our elected officials, and their Washington hangers-on, is part and parcel of the ruling elite’s self-referential way of looking at the world — the byproduct of extreme hubris, untrammeled narcissism, and a half century of American global hegemony. This is an occupational hazard of all ruling elites throughout history: encased in a bubble, and blinded by their impregnable complacency, they never see the crack-up coming until it’s already too late to do anything about it.
Deaf to the tumult rising above the castle walls, they go about their routine rituals of power-worship and inside baseball, oblivious to what’s coming. That’s why the so-called budget “crisis” produced an agreement to basically continue as before: real spending won’t drop, only the rate of increase. That’s why Anne-Marie Slaughter and her fellow Valkyries at the State Department and MSNBC are dancing a “victory” jig over Libya. To the idolators of Power, as Orwell puts it, “whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.”
The lords of Washington are devoted to the myth of their own invincibility: the colonnaded halls of the Capitol and the sacred precincts of the White House are, for them, the inviolable epicenter of all that really matters, with the rest a mere afterthought. Who cares what those rubes in flyover country are saying about Ron Paul, the wars, or anything else?
This is the great weakness of decadent elites: they develop a debilitating tunnel vision which is all mixed up with their power-worship and, of course, their career prospects. In order to advance through the ranks, they must continually reaffirm their belief in the validity (and, if not that, then the de facto invulnerability) of the system. To do otherwise is to risk being sidelined, and marginalized. You can’t really blame Ms. Mangu-Ward: after all, everyone has to make a living.
Blinded by hubris, and succored by their own complacency, ruling elites have been known to march to the guillotine still believing in their own invincibility. Revolutions do take place, however, and they occur because, suddenly, the majority comes to see that another world is possible. And it doesn’t have to be a majority of the country, at that: it can be a determined and very well-organized minority that knows what it wants and seizes the opportunity to get it.
With the crisis of the country – economic, social, and moral – reaching the boiling point, Mangu-Ward’s flippant dismissal of the idea that another world is possible, that a true outsider like Paul could come from behind and seize the moment, was infuriating indeed. It made people angry because it underscored the arrogance, and the tired cynicism, of Washington politics-as-usual, made all the more abrasive coming out of the mouth of a supposed “libertarian.”
Americans are getting very close to the breaking point: that is, the point where they are ready to break with the old and take their chances with the new – because anything is better than the status quo. When they get there, a committed minority with the passion and the political savvy to make a difference could very well win an election – or, at any rate, make it so difficult for the ruling elite to retain Power as to wipe the smirk off Ms. Mangu-Ward’s face.
The war issue, as Trotta trenchantly observed, is quite conceivably the spark that will set the prairie aflame: we’ve been through economic downturns before, without a political and social revolution overturning the established order. This time, however, we’re a world empire — the Lone Superpower — still sending out expeditionary forces to subdue new territories while we ourselves teeter on the brink of bankruptcy.
In the wake of the Soviet empire’s collapse, the American ruling class and its European allies are making a real attempt to establish a “world order” – with themselves at the top, naturally enough. The imminent collapse of the world economic system, however, is putting a bit of a dent in their plans: to them, however, this is just a bump on the road to empire. They don’t see the danger – to themselves – ahead.
This is the issue that will send Americans over the edge, and – unfortunately – only Ron Paul is talking about it. I had really hoped the left might wake up in time to mount an insurgent challenge in the Democratic presidential primaries, but today’s lefties (redubbed “progressives”) are too domesticated to even contemplate it. Would you expect a house cat to take down a mountain lion?
The paladins of the status quo are riding high, these days, but there are tremors shaking their world, and they’re a bit unsteady on their feet. One can only note that, the day after Mangu-Ward sneered at Paul’s chances, a Gallup poll was released showing him in a statistical dead heat with Barack Obama. Another poll showed him surpassing Bachmann nationally, and coming in with 13% in New Hampshire, nearly double his previous showing.
Let the cosmotarians smirk all they want: let them dredge up the alleged “dirt” on the Good Doctor, in coordination with their neocon friends, and go on Fox News to denigrate a decent and principled man. He’s making history: they are making background noise.
As senior editor of Reason magazine, an ostensibly libertarian publication, the Paulians rightly expected her to stand up for her team. Oddly, it was left to the other panelist, journalist and author Liz Trotta – not a libertarian, as far as I know – to defend Paul, and her defense was interesting: she said the wars are a bigger issue than anyone realizes, and since Paul is the only Republican candidate calling for an end to US intervention around the world, the issue could conceivably catapult him into the top tier. Mangu-Ward, a former staffer at the Weekly Standard, sat there and rolled her eyes, as if someone had suggested the moon is made of green cheese.
Immediately after her performance, a howl of outrage went up from the libertarian ranks, demanding Mangu-Ward’s head. “Fire her!” they demanded – indeed, so numerous and loud were the protests and subscription cancellations that Nick Gillespie, former editor-in-chief at Reason and now resident Talking Head, was forced to take to the Reason blog with a rather weak defense of his colleague’s faux pas. Since Reason’s slogan is “free markets and free minds,” averred Gillespie, their editors are free to say and write whatever they want. According to this theory, Mangu-Ward could predict the victory of the Socialist Party candidate, and not collect a pink slip. That this would never happen is irrelevant: Reason is a Beltway institution, although they still retain their office in Los Angeles, and Gillespie was simply defending his fellow Beltway pundit – and the Conventional Wisdom she gave voice to — against the mob of ignorant hoi polloi,
But why were the libertarian hoi polloi so angry? It was, I think, much more than the fact that one is supposed to defend one’s own tribe against external attack: after all, this isn’t the first time Reason has sneered at Ron Paul, who is so far removed from the trendy “lifestyle” issues the magazine loves to write about that the distance can only be measured in light years. The “cosmopolitan” wing of the libertarian movement has very little in common with the grassroots, and this is true for the simple reason that the “cosmotarians” nearly all live and work in Washington, D.C., where the tyranny of the Conventional Wisdom is strongest.
No one in the Imperial City, outside of Ron Paul and his staff, believes the Paul campaign is going anywhere, and, more – they don’t believe it can go anywhere but into the dustbin of yesterday’s failed campaigns. It is they – the self-appointed gatekeepers and guardians of the Conventional Wisdom – who define the parameters of the possible, and they have deemed a Paul presidency impossible because it goes against everything they’ve ever known and were taught to believe. Even the “libertarians” among them – and I use the term very loosely – are trapped inside this bubble where nothing much ever changes, and this means the State and its worshippers are always going to be on top, and the libertarian “radicals” (and their progressive brothers-and-sisters-in-spirit on the “far left”) are always going to be marginal. This ultra-conservative mindset – conservative in the temperamental sense – is a function not only of what the Beltway pundits believe, but, rather, of who they are and where they live.
They are intellectuals, albeit of the third or fourth tier, publicists, policy wonks – denizens of the Beltway subculture, where Power is at the center of everything. In these circles, one’s relationship to Power determines one’s social and professional standing, and the attainment of Power is the end-all and be-all of existence. If you’re not in Power, then you’re constantly angling and scheming to get back into Power. The role of libertarians in such a milieu is to act as the class clowns, or the Bad Kids – who are allowed a certain amount of leeway, but, in order to keep their jobs and their vaunted credibility, invariably police themselves so as to avoid expulsion from Olympus. Thus, the Beltway “libertarians” are allowed to play in their own sandbox, contenting themselves with extolling methamphetamine addiction and calling for the immediate importation of the entire Mexican population to Arizona – but beyond that they dare not stray. Thus, Reason stayed “neutral” – i.e. objectively pro-war – during the run up to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, running both pro and anti-war pieces as if the two held equal weight from a libertarian perspective. War is debatable over at Reason magazine, but the legalization of heroin and the sale of babies – not so much.
In any case, the really interesting part of all this – didn’t you know we’d get to the interesting part eventually? – is what it says about how differently the two main classes in American society see the possibilities of social change.
To us ordinary Americans, the hoi polloi if you will, the process of social and political change is simple: we get to decide if and when a political change occurs, because, you see, we have these events known as elections. Which means we get to pick and choose our leaders: if we don’t like the current occupant of the Oval Office, we can pitch him out and raise someone else up to take his place. It could be any native-born American in theory at least.
To the Beltway crowd – the elaborate society that has grown up around what can only be characterized as America’s version of a Royal Court – this is an archaic fiction, a theory that will never be put into practice. In reality, they believe, they get to do the choosing, by setting up the standards and nominating candidates to the “top tier.” From these chosen few will come the actual winners. Having jumped through all the traditional hoops, and survived the scrutiny of the various lobbyists, both foreign and domestic, the elite’s favored candidates will be dutifully rubberstamped by the American public, and two will emerge from the two state-privileged parties – one from Team Red, and one from Team Blue – to do battle. This way, no matter who wins, the status quo prevails unto eternity.
To our rulers in Washington, and their intellectual sycophants, their reign is slated to last practically forever. Sure, Team Red may take the throne White House next time, but that just means a few billion dollars less will be spread around at home and a few billion more will wind up in the pockets of military contractors and the Koch brothers. From the Beltway’s point of view, change on a fundamental level is not only undesirable – it’s impossible.
The reason has to do with the mindset of a certain sort of intellectual, best described by George Orwell in his treatment of James Burnham, a professor of philosophy and a figure who commanded some attention in intellectual circles in the late 1930s and early 40s. Burnham was a former leftist who switched over to the right after World War II, going on to become a founding editor of National Review. His 1941 book, The Managerial Revolution, made a splash when it appeared, prophesizing a German victory in Europe and the break-up of the USSR. Tracing the trajectory of Burnham’s mistaken predictions and ideological predilections, Orwell notes that whomever seems to be winning at the time – the Germans, when Burnham’s book was being written – is presented as if their victory was all but inevitable. Being proved wrong didn’t stop Burnham: after the war, he took to praising Stalin in an eerie essay for Partisan Review, “Lenin’s Heir” – just at the point when Stalin and FDR were divvying up the spoils of war in Central and Eastern Europe. As Orwell put it:
“Power worship blurs political judgement because it leads, almost unavoidably, to the belief that present trends will continue. Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible. If the Japanese have conquered south Asia, then they will keep south Asia for ever, if the Germans have captured Tobruk, they will infallibly capture Cairo; if the Russians are in Berlin, it will not be long before they are in London: and so on. This habit of mind leads also to the belief that things will happen more quickly, completely, and catastrophically than they ever do in practice. … Such a manner of thinking is bound to lead to mistaken prophecies, because, even when it gauges the direction of events rightly, it will miscalculate their tempo. Within the space of five years Burnham foretold the domination of Russia by Germany and of Germany by Russia. In each case he was obeying the same instinct: the instinct to bow down before the conqueror of the moment, to accept the existing trend as irreversible.”
Bowing before the conqueror of the moment is the leitmotif of life in official Washington, and it defines the limits of the possible. No one foresaw the implosion of the Soviet empire, including especially the Soviets and our own CIA – just as no one can imagine the decline and fall of the American empire, which Ron Paul has been predicting, now, for all the years he’s been in politics.
The incredible short-sightedness of our elected officials, and their Washington hangers-on, is part and parcel of the ruling elite’s self-referential way of looking at the world — the byproduct of extreme hubris, untrammeled narcissism, and a half century of American global hegemony. This is an occupational hazard of all ruling elites throughout history: encased in a bubble, and blinded by their impregnable complacency, they never see the crack-up coming until it’s already too late to do anything about it.
Deaf to the tumult rising above the castle walls, they go about their routine rituals of power-worship and inside baseball, oblivious to what’s coming. That’s why the so-called budget “crisis” produced an agreement to basically continue as before: real spending won’t drop, only the rate of increase. That’s why Anne-Marie Slaughter and her fellow Valkyries at the State Department and MSNBC are dancing a “victory” jig over Libya. To the idolators of Power, as Orwell puts it, “whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.”
The lords of Washington are devoted to the myth of their own invincibility: the colonnaded halls of the Capitol and the sacred precincts of the White House are, for them, the inviolable epicenter of all that really matters, with the rest a mere afterthought. Who cares what those rubes in flyover country are saying about Ron Paul, the wars, or anything else?
This is the great weakness of decadent elites: they develop a debilitating tunnel vision which is all mixed up with their power-worship and, of course, their career prospects. In order to advance through the ranks, they must continually reaffirm their belief in the validity (and, if not that, then the de facto invulnerability) of the system. To do otherwise is to risk being sidelined, and marginalized. You can’t really blame Ms. Mangu-Ward: after all, everyone has to make a living.
Blinded by hubris, and succored by their own complacency, ruling elites have been known to march to the guillotine still believing in their own invincibility. Revolutions do take place, however, and they occur because, suddenly, the majority comes to see that another world is possible. And it doesn’t have to be a majority of the country, at that: it can be a determined and very well-organized minority that knows what it wants and seizes the opportunity to get it.
With the crisis of the country – economic, social, and moral – reaching the boiling point, Mangu-Ward’s flippant dismissal of the idea that another world is possible, that a true outsider like Paul could come from behind and seize the moment, was infuriating indeed. It made people angry because it underscored the arrogance, and the tired cynicism, of Washington politics-as-usual, made all the more abrasive coming out of the mouth of a supposed “libertarian.”
Americans are getting very close to the breaking point: that is, the point where they are ready to break with the old and take their chances with the new – because anything is better than the status quo. When they get there, a committed minority with the passion and the political savvy to make a difference could very well win an election – or, at any rate, make it so difficult for the ruling elite to retain Power as to wipe the smirk off Ms. Mangu-Ward’s face.
The war issue, as Trotta trenchantly observed, is quite conceivably the spark that will set the prairie aflame: we’ve been through economic downturns before, without a political and social revolution overturning the established order. This time, however, we’re a world empire — the Lone Superpower — still sending out expeditionary forces to subdue new territories while we ourselves teeter on the brink of bankruptcy.
In the wake of the Soviet empire’s collapse, the American ruling class and its European allies are making a real attempt to establish a “world order” – with themselves at the top, naturally enough. The imminent collapse of the world economic system, however, is putting a bit of a dent in their plans: to them, however, this is just a bump on the road to empire. They don’t see the danger – to themselves – ahead.
This is the issue that will send Americans over the edge, and – unfortunately – only Ron Paul is talking about it. I had really hoped the left might wake up in time to mount an insurgent challenge in the Democratic presidential primaries, but today’s lefties (redubbed “progressives”) are too domesticated to even contemplate it. Would you expect a house cat to take down a mountain lion?
The paladins of the status quo are riding high, these days, but there are tremors shaking their world, and they’re a bit unsteady on their feet. One can only note that, the day after Mangu-Ward sneered at Paul’s chances, a Gallup poll was released showing him in a statistical dead heat with Barack Obama. Another poll showed him surpassing Bachmann nationally, and coming in with 13% in New Hampshire, nearly double his previous showing.
Let the cosmotarians smirk all they want: let them dredge up the alleged “dirt” on the Good Doctor, in coordination with their neocon friends, and go on Fox News to denigrate a decent and principled man. He’s making history: they are making background noise.
Saturday
WHAT I THINK........JIM COX AND JIM HARRIS
The Republican Party is desperately seeking a candidate who can unseat Barack Obama.
What qualifications would the ideal candidate have? How about these?
1. He should bring to mind popular past Republican presidents and leaders, to prove his authenticity and excite the Republican base.
2. At the same time, he should be able to win the support of a large number of Independents and disaffected Democrats.
3. He must provide a sharp and positive contrast to Obama. The country is souring on Obama – polls show him at all-time lows. Obama’s youth, once appealing to voters as freshness, is now looking more and more like inexperience and uncertainty. A mature GOP candidate, with successful experience inside and outside of politics, would provide a sharp and appealing contrast.
4. He must have a solid record of foresight on the economy. As in past elections, the phrase "It's the economy, stupid" may decide the election.
5. His message should excite and motivate the increasing number of voters looking for a limited government, pro-Constitution candidate.
6. Above all, of course, the candidate must have a genuine shot at beating Barack Obama.
We have such a candidate before us – Ron Paul. Consider:
1. More than any other GOP candidate, he recalls the best qualities of previous popular Republican presidents. He is the very embodiment of Ronald Reagan's statement that "Government is not the solution, government is the problem." Just at the moment that the public is turning against Obama’s several wars, Paul reminds us of President Eisenhower, both for Ike's ending of the Korean War and, especially, his renowned warning about the dangers of the military-industrial complex. He also calls to mind two famous GOP candidates of the past, who, though unsuccessful in their races, profoundly influenced the GOP in the direction of limited government and constitutionalism: Barry Goldwater and "Mr. Republican," Robert Taft.
2. Surveys show that Ron Paul has more appeal to Independents and disaffected Democrats than any other Republican candidate – and more than Obama.
Every Democratic vote for Paul is at the same time one less Democratic vote for Obama – a twofer of the best sort! And only Ron Paul can assemble a coalition of Tea Partiers, anti-war and pro-civil liberties leftists, and change-minded Independents, while at the same time retaining the GOP base. Indeed, a recent study showed that a stunning 49% of his supporters would not vote for any other Republican candidate.
3. Ron Paul exudes a Reaganesque maturity that can trump Obama’s youth card. Remember Reagan's effective reframing of the age issue during the 1984 debate with Walter Mondale: "I will not exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience." Unlike Obama, Paul has served in the military and has been successful in his private sector career. And Paul has a political record of trustworthiness and consistency that no one else in Congress, Democrat or Republican, has.
4. Paul has been right, again, and again, about the economy. His message of free markets, limited government, and economic liberty will stand in stark contrast to the ever-bigger-government rhetoric of Obama.
5. No candidate in modern American history has been as close to the message of the Founding Fathers, as deeply committed to the Constitution, as Ron Paul. His supporters already know this, and more people are learning about this every day. Glenn Beck recently told his millions of listeners that Paul is "the closest to our Founders" of any of the GOP candidates. This has appeal that transcends left-versus-right politics.
Millions of Americans will be excited to have the opportunity to vote for a candidate sounding the ideals of the Fathers.
6. Finally, on the vital question of who can beat Obama, surveys show Ron Paul can compete head-on with Obama. Indeed, there are indications that Paul has the best chance of any Republican against Obama.
Summing up: no one else but Ron Paul fulfils these six crucial requirements; Ron Paul is the Republican Party Dream Candidate!
What qualifications would the ideal candidate have? How about these?
1. He should bring to mind popular past Republican presidents and leaders, to prove his authenticity and excite the Republican base.
2. At the same time, he should be able to win the support of a large number of Independents and disaffected Democrats.
3. He must provide a sharp and positive contrast to Obama. The country is souring on Obama – polls show him at all-time lows. Obama’s youth, once appealing to voters as freshness, is now looking more and more like inexperience and uncertainty. A mature GOP candidate, with successful experience inside and outside of politics, would provide a sharp and appealing contrast.
4. He must have a solid record of foresight on the economy. As in past elections, the phrase "It's the economy, stupid" may decide the election.
5. His message should excite and motivate the increasing number of voters looking for a limited government, pro-Constitution candidate.
6. Above all, of course, the candidate must have a genuine shot at beating Barack Obama.
We have such a candidate before us – Ron Paul. Consider:
1. More than any other GOP candidate, he recalls the best qualities of previous popular Republican presidents. He is the very embodiment of Ronald Reagan's statement that "Government is not the solution, government is the problem." Just at the moment that the public is turning against Obama’s several wars, Paul reminds us of President Eisenhower, both for Ike's ending of the Korean War and, especially, his renowned warning about the dangers of the military-industrial complex. He also calls to mind two famous GOP candidates of the past, who, though unsuccessful in their races, profoundly influenced the GOP in the direction of limited government and constitutionalism: Barry Goldwater and "Mr. Republican," Robert Taft.
2. Surveys show that Ron Paul has more appeal to Independents and disaffected Democrats than any other Republican candidate – and more than Obama.
Every Democratic vote for Paul is at the same time one less Democratic vote for Obama – a twofer of the best sort! And only Ron Paul can assemble a coalition of Tea Partiers, anti-war and pro-civil liberties leftists, and change-minded Independents, while at the same time retaining the GOP base. Indeed, a recent study showed that a stunning 49% of his supporters would not vote for any other Republican candidate.
3. Ron Paul exudes a Reaganesque maturity that can trump Obama’s youth card. Remember Reagan's effective reframing of the age issue during the 1984 debate with Walter Mondale: "I will not exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience." Unlike Obama, Paul has served in the military and has been successful in his private sector career. And Paul has a political record of trustworthiness and consistency that no one else in Congress, Democrat or Republican, has.
4. Paul has been right, again, and again, about the economy. His message of free markets, limited government, and economic liberty will stand in stark contrast to the ever-bigger-government rhetoric of Obama.
5. No candidate in modern American history has been as close to the message of the Founding Fathers, as deeply committed to the Constitution, as Ron Paul. His supporters already know this, and more people are learning about this every day. Glenn Beck recently told his millions of listeners that Paul is "the closest to our Founders" of any of the GOP candidates. This has appeal that transcends left-versus-right politics.
Millions of Americans will be excited to have the opportunity to vote for a candidate sounding the ideals of the Fathers.
6. Finally, on the vital question of who can beat Obama, surveys show Ron Paul can compete head-on with Obama. Indeed, there are indications that Paul has the best chance of any Republican against Obama.
Summing up: no one else but Ron Paul fulfils these six crucial requirements; Ron Paul is the Republican Party Dream Candidate!
WHAT I THINK........JACK KERWICK
It is hard not to be amazed by the blackout of media coverage of Ron Paul’s presidential campaign. Had Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain, Rick Santorum, Jon Huntsman, or any second-tier candidate been performing as remotely as well as Paul has, he would no longer be regarded as a “second-tier” candidate. To the credit of such left-leaning outlets like Jon Stewart's The Daily Show and The Huffington Post, this phenomenon has not gone unnoticed by everyone.
Let’s think about this.
In spite of the extent to which Paul has been ignored by the establishment media in both of its leftist and rightist varieties, he unfailingly elicits explosive applause in every GOP presidential primary debate in which he has participated. A Fox News poll, of all places, shows that the overwhelming majority of its respondents hold that Ron Paul achieved a decisive victory over all of the other candidates in the most recent debate in Iowa. Of 7,991 “active” cities nationwide that participated in the poll, and 43, 293 total votes, 27,459 people thought that Paul won the debate. Newt Gingrich came in second place – with 5, 906 votes.
Statistically speaking, Ron Paul practically tied with Michele Bachmann for first place in the Ames Straw Poll, a contest that is evidently so significant that “top-tier” contender Tim Pawlenty’s third place showing compelled him to abandon his campaign. Bachmann beat Paul by a meager 152 votes.
A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll released back in May showed that among possible Republican contenders (Perry may not have been a consideration as of yet), Paul stands the best chance of beating President Obama. This poll showed Obama leading Paul by only seven percentage points, while he lead Romney by eleven. Since then, however, things have changed.
A Gallup poll from August 23 shows that if the election were held today, Mitt Romney would beat Obama by two percentage points (48%-46%) and Rick Perry would tie with him (at 47%). It is true that this same poll has Obama beating Paul by (only) two points (47%-45%); but it has Obama beating “top-tier” candidate Bachmann by four points (48%-44%)! However, when it comes to that much cherished “independent” vote, Paul leads Obama by three points. The significance of this vis-à-vis my contention that Paul is a top-tier candidate himself and should be recognized as such becomes obvious once we grasp that Romney is the only other Republican candidate who leads Obama among independents by this much (but only this much). “Top-tier” candidate Perry leads Obama in this category by two points while “top-tier” candidate Bachmann trails Obama among independents by six points.
In a Texas poll among “882 highly active Republican voters,” these voters said that if the Texas primaries were held at the time that the poll was taken, they would vote for Congressman Paul before they would vote for any other Republican contender – including their own governor, Rick Perry (who was second choice).
As I write this, a Gallup Presidential Nomination preference poll shows that Paul has leapt ahead of “top-tier” candidate Michele Bachmann and is now third place behind Perry and Romney. Twenty-nine percent of those polled prefer Perry; 17% are partial to Romney; and Paul picks up 13% of the vote against Bachmann’s 10%.
Polls fluctuate. In any event, they are no substitute for actual votes. Still, the point here is not that Paul is likely to get his party’s nomination or that he would actually win the general if he did; these propositions it is not my purpose to either affirm or deny. Rather, the point is only to show that by the very standards by which establishment pundits and pollsters determine top-tier candidates, Paul should be considered a top-tier candidate.
But he is not.
The reason for this, I think, is pretty clear.
Let’s think about this.
In spite of the extent to which Paul has been ignored by the establishment media in both of its leftist and rightist varieties, he unfailingly elicits explosive applause in every GOP presidential primary debate in which he has participated. A Fox News poll, of all places, shows that the overwhelming majority of its respondents hold that Ron Paul achieved a decisive victory over all of the other candidates in the most recent debate in Iowa. Of 7,991 “active” cities nationwide that participated in the poll, and 43, 293 total votes, 27,459 people thought that Paul won the debate. Newt Gingrich came in second place – with 5, 906 votes.
Statistically speaking, Ron Paul practically tied with Michele Bachmann for first place in the Ames Straw Poll, a contest that is evidently so significant that “top-tier” contender Tim Pawlenty’s third place showing compelled him to abandon his campaign. Bachmann beat Paul by a meager 152 votes.
A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll released back in May showed that among possible Republican contenders (Perry may not have been a consideration as of yet), Paul stands the best chance of beating President Obama. This poll showed Obama leading Paul by only seven percentage points, while he lead Romney by eleven. Since then, however, things have changed.
A Gallup poll from August 23 shows that if the election were held today, Mitt Romney would beat Obama by two percentage points (48%-46%) and Rick Perry would tie with him (at 47%). It is true that this same poll has Obama beating Paul by (only) two points (47%-45%); but it has Obama beating “top-tier” candidate Bachmann by four points (48%-44%)! However, when it comes to that much cherished “independent” vote, Paul leads Obama by three points. The significance of this vis-à-vis my contention that Paul is a top-tier candidate himself and should be recognized as such becomes obvious once we grasp that Romney is the only other Republican candidate who leads Obama among independents by this much (but only this much). “Top-tier” candidate Perry leads Obama in this category by two points while “top-tier” candidate Bachmann trails Obama among independents by six points.
In a Texas poll among “882 highly active Republican voters,” these voters said that if the Texas primaries were held at the time that the poll was taken, they would vote for Congressman Paul before they would vote for any other Republican contender – including their own governor, Rick Perry (who was second choice).
As I write this, a Gallup Presidential Nomination preference poll shows that Paul has leapt ahead of “top-tier” candidate Michele Bachmann and is now third place behind Perry and Romney. Twenty-nine percent of those polled prefer Perry; 17% are partial to Romney; and Paul picks up 13% of the vote against Bachmann’s 10%.
Polls fluctuate. In any event, they are no substitute for actual votes. Still, the point here is not that Paul is likely to get his party’s nomination or that he would actually win the general if he did; these propositions it is not my purpose to either affirm or deny. Rather, the point is only to show that by the very standards by which establishment pundits and pollsters determine top-tier candidates, Paul should be considered a top-tier candidate.
But he is not.
The reason for this, I think, is pretty clear.
Friday
WHAT I THINK.......JOHN THORPE
Ignored by the media and dismissed by the Republican Party in general, liberty-minded Congressman Ron Paul leaped into third place today in the Gallup Presidential Nomination preference poll.
Paul jumped over Michele Bachmann, the Tea Party darling/lunatic, relegating her to fourth-place in the current poll. Here's how the numbers shake out today.
•Rick Perry, Texas Governor: 29%
•Mitt Romney, former Massachusetts Governor: 17%
•Ron Paul, Texas Congressman: 13%
•Michele Bachmann, Minnesota Congresswoman: 10%
That's right. Ron Paul jumped into third place...and the media continues to ignore his candidacy. I can't explain it as anything other than outright bias against the man and his ideas.
One thing to take away from the poll is that it only includes current, declared candidates. It does not, for example, include potential candidates Donald Trump, Sarah Palin, Chris Christie, Rudolph Giuliani, or George Pataki — all of whom have made noise about possibly jumping into the race at a later date.
One of them could possibly be very successful following a later-entrant strategy. As of today, a full 17% of respondents indicated "no preference" in their vote.
Think about that for a minute. "None of the above" essentially takes second place right now, ahead of everyone but Rick Perry — and even Republicans aren't crazy enough to nominate Rick Perry. This means one thing: there is room for either one of the marginalized candidates (like Ron Paul) to gain a lot of support, or a new candidate to emerge and become an instant challenger.
Given his three percent jump in the polls (despite the entrance of former Democrat and popular Texas governor Rick Perry into the race) shows that Ron Paul's numbers are steady and rising. Are we witnessing the promised Ron Paul revolution, or has the Texas congressman maxed out his voter numbers? I suppose the analysis depends on who you ask.
Certainly experts are beginning to see the benefits of signing on to Team Ron Paul. The Ron Paul 2012 Presidential Campaign announced today that constitutional and international law expert Bruce Fein will join the campaign as senior advisor on legal matters.
“Bruce Fein's participation adds to our campaign's already intellectual heft, enabling us to more broadly engage the conversation about constitutionality, civil liberties and the dangers to national security of an increasingly interventionist foreign policy,” said Ron Paul 2012 Campaign Chairman Jesse Benton.
According to the Ron Paul for President Website (ronpaul2012.com), Mr. Fein served as associate deputy attorney and general counsel to the Federal Communications Commission under President Ronald Reagan. He served as Research Director for Republicans on the Joint Congressional Committee on Covert Arms Sales to Iran, and on the American Bar Associations Committee on Presidential Signing Statements. He has been a Visiting Fellow for Constitutional Studies at the Heritage Foundation and an adjunct scholar at American Enterprise Institute. He has advised numerous countries on constitutional reform, including South Africa, Hungary and Russia.
Apparently the American people are starting to take notice, too. According to the most recent Rasmussen survey of likely voters, Ron Paul is a mere one point behind President Obama in a head-to-head matchup — a better result than any of the other GOP contenders received.
This is despite the media blackout around Ron Paul's campaign, and despite the media's insistence that Ron Paul can't beat Obama. This poll suggests he can.
Paul jumped over Michele Bachmann, the Tea Party darling/lunatic, relegating her to fourth-place in the current poll. Here's how the numbers shake out today.
•Rick Perry, Texas Governor: 29%
•Mitt Romney, former Massachusetts Governor: 17%
•Ron Paul, Texas Congressman: 13%
•Michele Bachmann, Minnesota Congresswoman: 10%
That's right. Ron Paul jumped into third place...and the media continues to ignore his candidacy. I can't explain it as anything other than outright bias against the man and his ideas.
One thing to take away from the poll is that it only includes current, declared candidates. It does not, for example, include potential candidates Donald Trump, Sarah Palin, Chris Christie, Rudolph Giuliani, or George Pataki — all of whom have made noise about possibly jumping into the race at a later date.
One of them could possibly be very successful following a later-entrant strategy. As of today, a full 17% of respondents indicated "no preference" in their vote.
Think about that for a minute. "None of the above" essentially takes second place right now, ahead of everyone but Rick Perry — and even Republicans aren't crazy enough to nominate Rick Perry. This means one thing: there is room for either one of the marginalized candidates (like Ron Paul) to gain a lot of support, or a new candidate to emerge and become an instant challenger.
Given his three percent jump in the polls (despite the entrance of former Democrat and popular Texas governor Rick Perry into the race) shows that Ron Paul's numbers are steady and rising. Are we witnessing the promised Ron Paul revolution, or has the Texas congressman maxed out his voter numbers? I suppose the analysis depends on who you ask.
Certainly experts are beginning to see the benefits of signing on to Team Ron Paul. The Ron Paul 2012 Presidential Campaign announced today that constitutional and international law expert Bruce Fein will join the campaign as senior advisor on legal matters.
“Bruce Fein's participation adds to our campaign's already intellectual heft, enabling us to more broadly engage the conversation about constitutionality, civil liberties and the dangers to national security of an increasingly interventionist foreign policy,” said Ron Paul 2012 Campaign Chairman Jesse Benton.
According to the Ron Paul for President Website (ronpaul2012.com), Mr. Fein served as associate deputy attorney and general counsel to the Federal Communications Commission under President Ronald Reagan. He served as Research Director for Republicans on the Joint Congressional Committee on Covert Arms Sales to Iran, and on the American Bar Associations Committee on Presidential Signing Statements. He has been a Visiting Fellow for Constitutional Studies at the Heritage Foundation and an adjunct scholar at American Enterprise Institute. He has advised numerous countries on constitutional reform, including South Africa, Hungary and Russia.
Apparently the American people are starting to take notice, too. According to the most recent Rasmussen survey of likely voters, Ron Paul is a mere one point behind President Obama in a head-to-head matchup — a better result than any of the other GOP contenders received.
This is despite the media blackout around Ron Paul's campaign, and despite the media's insistence that Ron Paul can't beat Obama. This poll suggests he can.
Thursday
WHAT I THINK.......PETER SCHIFF
Picking up where they left off in 2008, the media is in the midst of a campaign to ignore and undermine the presidential candidacy of Ron Paul (they gave me even rougher treatment during my 2010 Senate run). Political pundits just do not know what to do with a candidate who fails to fit into the blue and red boxes that form the simple narrative of American politics. They are perturbed by the grass roots nature of the campaign, by the strange honesty and earnestness of the candidate and his supporters, and the odd mixture of conservative values and liberty-minded policies. And like most adolescents, they reject what they don't understand.
The media's revulsion reached a fever pitch in the wake of the August 12 Iowa Straw Poll, the first test of the strength of Republican Presidential candidates. Objectively the results were a dead heat between Michelle Bachman and Ron Paul, who captured 28% and 27% of the votes respectively. But you would never have known that based on the subsequent media coverage.
The story that almost all news outlets ran with was that the poll produced a "top-tier" of candidates that included Bachman, Mitt Romney, and Rick Perry (both Romney and Perry received less than 5% of the Iowa vote). There was almost no mention of Congressman Paul's strong performance. The media also ignored how Perry's entrance into the race will draw votes away from Bachman, thereby benefiting Paul. The media silence even prompted comedian Jon Stewart to issue a hilarious and scathing indictment.
Now the media is even impugning what should be seen as the Congressman's most successful accomplishment: the performance of his investment portfolio.
In an August 20 article entitled "Candidate of Doom and Gloom," Barron's magazine goes out of its way to characterize Ron Paul's gold mining-heavy portfolio allocation as simplistic, robotic, and unpatriotic. And while the reporter, Barron's Washington bureau chief Jim McTague, grudgingly recognized how these "stopped clock" investments had made strong gains over the last few years, he glaringly under-reported the long term success and wisdom of the Congressman's strategy.
By any objective standard the portfolio would make any financial superstar green with jealousy. Fueled by his understanding of the inflationary policies unrelentingly pushed by his colleagues in Washington, Ron wisely loaded up on gold and gold mining stocks in the mid to late 1990s when those assets were regarded as the poor stepchildren of Wall Street. Although these assets have significantly beaten the broad markets over the one and three year time frames used in the article, most of their phenomenal gains occurred earlier in the last decade. McTague, however, completely neglects to mention this despite his noting that Ron Paul favored a "buy and hold" strategy that surely gave him exposure to those fat years.
Amazingly, the average 10 year return of the 8 stocks listed in his top 10 holdings (that have 10 year track records – the two other positions have not been around that long) came in at more than 600%! During that time frame the S&P 500 was down 3%. Is there any stock mutual fund that can even touch that performance over a decade? Not likely.
If Barron's chooses to label this strategy as "stopped clock" investing, so be it. But a more honest assessment would simply call it "successful" investing.
But ignoring his returns is just a minor offense in the article. Its main attack is far more subtle. Using evangelical language, McTague stresses that the Congressman's investment decisions were informed by a lack of faith in the United States. His portfolio is described as a "super bearish bet against the United States," implying that the Congressman is unpatriotic. Would it have been more patriotic to foolishly bet on the U.S. economy and to have gone broke like the majority of American investors?
More pernicious still are implications that the Congressman opposed the recent debt ceiling increase because he was looking to goose his investment returns. The article argues that an engineered default (by failing to raise the ceiling) would have caused economic crisis in the U.S., thereby pushing up the price of gold and gold-related investments. Not only is this a low blow but the logic is faulty at its core.
It is much more likely that a failure to raise the debt ceiling would have signaled an end to reckless spending and currency debasement, which would have restored confidence in the U.S. dollar and taken the shine off of gold and gold-related investments. In fact, all of Paul's efforts in Congress over the decades to champion more responsible monetary and fiscal policy can be seen as detrimental to his own investment portfolio. If anything, his actions have been selfless rather than selfish.
Like most investment professionals, Ron Paul's opponents likely failed to comprehend the damage the overly expansive monetary and fiscal policy would do to our economy and, as a result, adopted mainstream investment strategies. While Barron's could try to characterize such approaches as being more patriotic, it certainly cannot describe them as being more successful. Isn't it about time we elected a president with some substance rather than someone who pantomimes in the preferred manner? Who do we want working in the Oval Office anyway: one of the few who understood how government policy would undermine our economy, and arranged his finances to profit from it, or one of many who had no clue?
The fact that Ron Paul chose to invest as he has is a testament to his intellect and his pragmatism. The fact that he voted the way he did, and tried relentlessly to persuade his colleagues to do likewise, in direct opposition to his personal investment strategy, is a testament to his patriotism. He knew that his appeals would fall on deaf ears and that Washington would destroy the dollar in its quest to "save" the economy. So while he tried to stop the train from running off a cliff, he took the sensible step of buying a parachute. Sounds like a guy I would like to see in the White House.
Too bad no one in the media seems to share these views.
The media's revulsion reached a fever pitch in the wake of the August 12 Iowa Straw Poll, the first test of the strength of Republican Presidential candidates. Objectively the results were a dead heat between Michelle Bachman and Ron Paul, who captured 28% and 27% of the votes respectively. But you would never have known that based on the subsequent media coverage.
The story that almost all news outlets ran with was that the poll produced a "top-tier" of candidates that included Bachman, Mitt Romney, and Rick Perry (both Romney and Perry received less than 5% of the Iowa vote). There was almost no mention of Congressman Paul's strong performance. The media also ignored how Perry's entrance into the race will draw votes away from Bachman, thereby benefiting Paul. The media silence even prompted comedian Jon Stewart to issue a hilarious and scathing indictment.
Now the media is even impugning what should be seen as the Congressman's most successful accomplishment: the performance of his investment portfolio.
In an August 20 article entitled "Candidate of Doom and Gloom," Barron's magazine goes out of its way to characterize Ron Paul's gold mining-heavy portfolio allocation as simplistic, robotic, and unpatriotic. And while the reporter, Barron's Washington bureau chief Jim McTague, grudgingly recognized how these "stopped clock" investments had made strong gains over the last few years, he glaringly under-reported the long term success and wisdom of the Congressman's strategy.
By any objective standard the portfolio would make any financial superstar green with jealousy. Fueled by his understanding of the inflationary policies unrelentingly pushed by his colleagues in Washington, Ron wisely loaded up on gold and gold mining stocks in the mid to late 1990s when those assets were regarded as the poor stepchildren of Wall Street. Although these assets have significantly beaten the broad markets over the one and three year time frames used in the article, most of their phenomenal gains occurred earlier in the last decade. McTague, however, completely neglects to mention this despite his noting that Ron Paul favored a "buy and hold" strategy that surely gave him exposure to those fat years.
Amazingly, the average 10 year return of the 8 stocks listed in his top 10 holdings (that have 10 year track records – the two other positions have not been around that long) came in at more than 600%! During that time frame the S&P 500 was down 3%. Is there any stock mutual fund that can even touch that performance over a decade? Not likely.
If Barron's chooses to label this strategy as "stopped clock" investing, so be it. But a more honest assessment would simply call it "successful" investing.
But ignoring his returns is just a minor offense in the article. Its main attack is far more subtle. Using evangelical language, McTague stresses that the Congressman's investment decisions were informed by a lack of faith in the United States. His portfolio is described as a "super bearish bet against the United States," implying that the Congressman is unpatriotic. Would it have been more patriotic to foolishly bet on the U.S. economy and to have gone broke like the majority of American investors?
More pernicious still are implications that the Congressman opposed the recent debt ceiling increase because he was looking to goose his investment returns. The article argues that an engineered default (by failing to raise the ceiling) would have caused economic crisis in the U.S., thereby pushing up the price of gold and gold-related investments. Not only is this a low blow but the logic is faulty at its core.
It is much more likely that a failure to raise the debt ceiling would have signaled an end to reckless spending and currency debasement, which would have restored confidence in the U.S. dollar and taken the shine off of gold and gold-related investments. In fact, all of Paul's efforts in Congress over the decades to champion more responsible monetary and fiscal policy can be seen as detrimental to his own investment portfolio. If anything, his actions have been selfless rather than selfish.
Like most investment professionals, Ron Paul's opponents likely failed to comprehend the damage the overly expansive monetary and fiscal policy would do to our economy and, as a result, adopted mainstream investment strategies. While Barron's could try to characterize such approaches as being more patriotic, it certainly cannot describe them as being more successful. Isn't it about time we elected a president with some substance rather than someone who pantomimes in the preferred manner? Who do we want working in the Oval Office anyway: one of the few who understood how government policy would undermine our economy, and arranged his finances to profit from it, or one of many who had no clue?
The fact that Ron Paul chose to invest as he has is a testament to his intellect and his pragmatism. The fact that he voted the way he did, and tried relentlessly to persuade his colleagues to do likewise, in direct opposition to his personal investment strategy, is a testament to his patriotism. He knew that his appeals would fall on deaf ears and that Washington would destroy the dollar in its quest to "save" the economy. So while he tried to stop the train from running off a cliff, he took the sensible step of buying a parachute. Sounds like a guy I would like to see in the White House.
Too bad no one in the media seems to share these views.
Wednesday
THE ILLUSION OF SAFETY
Recent incidents of violence in Norway and London have made us understandably uncomfortable here at home, as many fear that a worsening economy will lead to violence and unrest in American cities. This is why Congress must view the economy as its first priority and a matter of national security: unless and until we get our fiscal house in order to foster economic growth, civil society will continue to deteriorate.
The fundamental lesson every American should learn from these incidents is that government cannot protect us. No matter how many laws we pass, no matter how many police or federal agents we put on the streets, a determined individual or group can still cause great harm. Both Norway and England have strict gun control laws, and London in particular has security cameras monitoring nearly all public areas. But laws and spy cameras are useless in the face of lawless mobs or sick mass killers. Only private individuals on the scene could have prevented or lessened these tragedies. And we should remember that theft, arson, and property damage were not the only criminal acts in London--innocent bystanders were assaulted and killed as well. In those instances deadly force used in self-defense would have been fully justified.
Perhaps the only good that can come from these terrible events is a reinforced understanding that we as individuals are responsible for our safety and the safety of our families. This means, frankly, that we must safely own and use firearms to deter or prevent criminal assaults on our homes and persons. It is absurd to think police or government agents can protect 310 million Americans around the clock.
Thanks to our media and many government officials, however, Americans have become conditioned to view the state as our protector and the solution to every problem. Whenever something terrible happens, especially when it becomes a prominent news story, people reflexively demand that government do something. This impulse almost always leads to bad laws, more debt, and the loss of liberty. It is completely at odds with the best American traditions of self-reliance and individual responsibility.
Do we really want to live in a world of police checkpoints, surveillance cameras, and metal detectors? Do we want to imprison every disturbed or alienated individual who fantasizes about violence? Do we really believe government can provide total security? Or can we accept that liberty is more important than the illusion of state-provided security?
Freedom is not defined by safety. Freedom is defined by the ability of citizens to live without government interference unless they use force or fraud against others. Government cannot create a world without risks, nor would we really wish to live in such a fictional place. Only a totalitarian society would even claim absolute safety as a worthy ideal, because it would require total state control over its citizens’ lives. Liberty has meaning only if we still believe in it when terrible things happen and a false government security blanket beckons.
The fundamental lesson every American should learn from these incidents is that government cannot protect us. No matter how many laws we pass, no matter how many police or federal agents we put on the streets, a determined individual or group can still cause great harm. Both Norway and England have strict gun control laws, and London in particular has security cameras monitoring nearly all public areas. But laws and spy cameras are useless in the face of lawless mobs or sick mass killers. Only private individuals on the scene could have prevented or lessened these tragedies. And we should remember that theft, arson, and property damage were not the only criminal acts in London--innocent bystanders were assaulted and killed as well. In those instances deadly force used in self-defense would have been fully justified.
Perhaps the only good that can come from these terrible events is a reinforced understanding that we as individuals are responsible for our safety and the safety of our families. This means, frankly, that we must safely own and use firearms to deter or prevent criminal assaults on our homes and persons. It is absurd to think police or government agents can protect 310 million Americans around the clock.
Thanks to our media and many government officials, however, Americans have become conditioned to view the state as our protector and the solution to every problem. Whenever something terrible happens, especially when it becomes a prominent news story, people reflexively demand that government do something. This impulse almost always leads to bad laws, more debt, and the loss of liberty. It is completely at odds with the best American traditions of self-reliance and individual responsibility.
Do we really want to live in a world of police checkpoints, surveillance cameras, and metal detectors? Do we want to imprison every disturbed or alienated individual who fantasizes about violence? Do we really believe government can provide total security? Or can we accept that liberty is more important than the illusion of state-provided security?
Freedom is not defined by safety. Freedom is defined by the ability of citizens to live without government interference unless they use force or fraud against others. Government cannot create a world without risks, nor would we really wish to live in such a fictional place. Only a totalitarian society would even claim absolute safety as a worthy ideal, because it would require total state control over its citizens’ lives. Liberty has meaning only if we still believe in it when terrible things happen and a false government security blanket beckons.
Tuesday
WHAT I THINK.......SUSAN WESTFALL
On the heels of the Ames Straw Poll results, we find the media doing almost exactly that which Neil Cavuto proposed as a hypothetical situation during his interview with Dr. Paul from the Straw Poll grounds. Namely – what if you do well, and no one reports it? As expected by everyone with even a partial brain, Ron Paul did fantastically well in the Straw Poll. His message of individual liberty, sound money and free trade with all – minus the financial and military entanglements that have helped bring us to the brink of ruin – is resounding so strongly with people everywhere that the two candidates best thought by many to represent the popular freedom message, were able to capture over 9000 votes between them. That they did so in the very heartland of America is an implacable declaration of what people are looking for in their next president. Granted, Ms. Bachman can’t really pass muster as a liberty candidate in most of her actions and votes, but she initially sounds good trying and the media were ecstatic, touting her first place victory from the highest media mountaintops. Ron Paul finished by capturing such a close second place win that 153 more votes would have put him in the lead. Even crickets would have been astounded at the total silence that accompanied Dr. Paul’s achievement. None of the grassroots were too surprised, however. We’ve been watching the media play the same disgusting marginalization games since 2007. We predicted it would happen too, but didn’t waste breath on the idea that it might be “hypothetical”. Regardless, I salute Mr. Cavuto for actually pointing out the possibility that not only might the emperor be waltzing about buck-naked on the morrow, but he’d likely be stinking drunk as well. It’s about time. The media has been complicit in the slow erosion of liberty and the disintegration of our Republic for far, far too long.
Let’s begin with a Youtube video that made the rounds at a brisk pace last Sunday titled “Being Ron Paul: The Media Fix is In.” It pretty much says it all and covers a variety of MSM contributions about the Straw Poll results. The ire and disgust at the pathetic and blatantly obvious removal or marginalization of Ron Paul’s close finish with Michelle Bachman is evident in the poster’s voice. That same sentiment was massively evidenced in the comments and responses to MSM articles and personal blog posts across the Internet world. The manner in which Matt Strawn reported the Straw Poll results live on CNN clearly announced the coming marginalization storm. Can anyone recall or point out another time in the recent history of Ames Straw Polls (or at any time in its history) when only the first place winner’s name was announced, followed immediately by the announcer exiting stage right briskly and wordlessly? “Stunned” probably does not even begin to describe the reactions of millions of viewers to that event. Even the panel of commentators was thrown off stride. Their reactions called to my mind a panel scene from the 2008 elections, when CNN was reporting the South Carolina primary. I remember quite clearly Anderson Cooper’s glazed look, when the reported numbers suddenly seemed to take a dramatically different track from where they had been previously going, magnified and reflected by the robotic expressions and stammered comments of the panel.
But I digress. Back to the video. At 3:11 a.m. Monday morning the view count was still stuck at 301 views – the exact same number it was on at 4 p.m. Sunday, when I viewed it the first time. Having seen links to it all over Twitter and Facebook on more occasions than I can count, I would expect it to have at least gone up some from when I first viewed it. Youtube has long been accused by many of suppressing view counts, which was of course poo-pooed as “conspiracy theory”. Based on the improbable immobility of the view count on just this one video, it doesn’t appear to be just theory in this case. Why? The “Gummy Bear” video can shoot up a million views in one day, but apparently something with real substance in its content must be held down lest the citizenry get over-excited seeing the view count rise. An ineffectual technique at best, idiocy at the very least. Here’s another excellent Youtube demonstrating media-weasel strong arm tactics. Now that your blood pressure is a least catching up (if not equal) to the slow pound mine has been building to for quite some time, here’s a link to Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show in which he echoes the incredulity of millions regarding the invisibility of Ron Paul. In the week since the Iowa Straw Poll there have been quite a number of stories in the media about Dr. Paul. A few of them honestly reporting his “top-tier” candidacy, as well as his fast growing influence and popularity. Many more continue to ignore, marginalize and weasel away. By far the majority address the media’s own failure to report election news either realistically or honestly. An excellent example readily admits the collusion of all in the media phenomenon of “choosing” the candidates.
Now I don’t have any exact numbers, but indications are excellent that the rest of America feels much as I do at this point in time. And I am bloody well tired of the media telling me what I should think, believe, understand or discuss. I am MORE than tired of them “choosing” pre-packaged, pre-approved and appropriately groomed candidates for my voting edification (and by groomed I don’t mean attired, although I’m downright sick of the emphasis placed on that as well). I do NOT want to vote for the preferred cut-out-party doll of the day, week, or month. I don’t give one whit what the “experts” paraded out each day by the media have to say about who is the front-runner or who is electable, nor do I believe a word they say. What makes them more expert than I or any other American? Their wonderfully prescient warnings regarding Fannie-Mae and Freddie-Mac? Their correctness regarding unconstitutional cakewalk wars? Their fantastic ability to predict the economic statistics they write? Thanks, but NO THANKS! I will do my own vetting and reach my own conclusions regarding any candidate that runs for office, high or low. The Internet offers each and every American the ability to easily check any candidate’s past voting record, their support for or against pertinent legislation, and a myriad of other insights into their character, beliefs and daily actions.
Given the choice that the Internet offers us all today, how long will we as a people continue to accept the endless lies pumped at us day in and day out by media hacks who neither represent the news honestly, nor have the guts to stand up and stop the idiocy themselves? That we should assign blame to the talking heads only and stop there however, is as ridiculous as their present efforts to pretend by omission that Ron Paul is not a top-tier contender in the GOP nominee election process. Those working in the media are at the very least guilty of misrepresenting the truth and at the worst complicit in coverups of God knows what criminal activities for those powerful entities that hand them their approved talking points and candidate lists on a daily basis. For decades, at least since the 60s, the media has been disgustingly subservient to “other interests” starting with the Federal Reserve and permeating through all the industrial complexes (military, medical, pharmaceutical, agricultural, etc.) as well as all their corporatist cronies. They haven’t just been “wagging the dog”, they’ve been wagging us to maintain the desired status-quo of wealth-transfer, empire-building, and war-for-plunder. Enough, I say.
Admitted or not, the American people are “mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.” The tipping point has been reached and the people are done with games. Ron Paul and the ideas he speaks of, as well as the solutions he offers will not be swept under the rug again. Just because the revolution isn’t being televised does not mean it won’t and isn’t occurring. It’s not only occurring, but will overcome. Liberty and the restoration of the Republic will move forward to victory in the hands of the real grassroots, the American people – and they don’t need a complicit media or approval from the “powers that be” to achieve it. As Ron Paul has often said, “An idea whose time has come will not be stopped by any government or any army [media or otherwise].”
Let’s begin with a Youtube video that made the rounds at a brisk pace last Sunday titled “Being Ron Paul: The Media Fix is In.” It pretty much says it all and covers a variety of MSM contributions about the Straw Poll results. The ire and disgust at the pathetic and blatantly obvious removal or marginalization of Ron Paul’s close finish with Michelle Bachman is evident in the poster’s voice. That same sentiment was massively evidenced in the comments and responses to MSM articles and personal blog posts across the Internet world. The manner in which Matt Strawn reported the Straw Poll results live on CNN clearly announced the coming marginalization storm. Can anyone recall or point out another time in the recent history of Ames Straw Polls (or at any time in its history) when only the first place winner’s name was announced, followed immediately by the announcer exiting stage right briskly and wordlessly? “Stunned” probably does not even begin to describe the reactions of millions of viewers to that event. Even the panel of commentators was thrown off stride. Their reactions called to my mind a panel scene from the 2008 elections, when CNN was reporting the South Carolina primary. I remember quite clearly Anderson Cooper’s glazed look, when the reported numbers suddenly seemed to take a dramatically different track from where they had been previously going, magnified and reflected by the robotic expressions and stammered comments of the panel.
But I digress. Back to the video. At 3:11 a.m. Monday morning the view count was still stuck at 301 views – the exact same number it was on at 4 p.m. Sunday, when I viewed it the first time. Having seen links to it all over Twitter and Facebook on more occasions than I can count, I would expect it to have at least gone up some from when I first viewed it. Youtube has long been accused by many of suppressing view counts, which was of course poo-pooed as “conspiracy theory”. Based on the improbable immobility of the view count on just this one video, it doesn’t appear to be just theory in this case. Why? The “Gummy Bear” video can shoot up a million views in one day, but apparently something with real substance in its content must be held down lest the citizenry get over-excited seeing the view count rise. An ineffectual technique at best, idiocy at the very least. Here’s another excellent Youtube demonstrating media-weasel strong arm tactics. Now that your blood pressure is a least catching up (if not equal) to the slow pound mine has been building to for quite some time, here’s a link to Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show in which he echoes the incredulity of millions regarding the invisibility of Ron Paul. In the week since the Iowa Straw Poll there have been quite a number of stories in the media about Dr. Paul. A few of them honestly reporting his “top-tier” candidacy, as well as his fast growing influence and popularity. Many more continue to ignore, marginalize and weasel away. By far the majority address the media’s own failure to report election news either realistically or honestly. An excellent example readily admits the collusion of all in the media phenomenon of “choosing” the candidates.
Now I don’t have any exact numbers, but indications are excellent that the rest of America feels much as I do at this point in time. And I am bloody well tired of the media telling me what I should think, believe, understand or discuss. I am MORE than tired of them “choosing” pre-packaged, pre-approved and appropriately groomed candidates for my voting edification (and by groomed I don’t mean attired, although I’m downright sick of the emphasis placed on that as well). I do NOT want to vote for the preferred cut-out-party doll of the day, week, or month. I don’t give one whit what the “experts” paraded out each day by the media have to say about who is the front-runner or who is electable, nor do I believe a word they say. What makes them more expert than I or any other American? Their wonderfully prescient warnings regarding Fannie-Mae and Freddie-Mac? Their correctness regarding unconstitutional cakewalk wars? Their fantastic ability to predict the economic statistics they write? Thanks, but NO THANKS! I will do my own vetting and reach my own conclusions regarding any candidate that runs for office, high or low. The Internet offers each and every American the ability to easily check any candidate’s past voting record, their support for or against pertinent legislation, and a myriad of other insights into their character, beliefs and daily actions.
Given the choice that the Internet offers us all today, how long will we as a people continue to accept the endless lies pumped at us day in and day out by media hacks who neither represent the news honestly, nor have the guts to stand up and stop the idiocy themselves? That we should assign blame to the talking heads only and stop there however, is as ridiculous as their present efforts to pretend by omission that Ron Paul is not a top-tier contender in the GOP nominee election process. Those working in the media are at the very least guilty of misrepresenting the truth and at the worst complicit in coverups of God knows what criminal activities for those powerful entities that hand them their approved talking points and candidate lists on a daily basis. For decades, at least since the 60s, the media has been disgustingly subservient to “other interests” starting with the Federal Reserve and permeating through all the industrial complexes (military, medical, pharmaceutical, agricultural, etc.) as well as all their corporatist cronies. They haven’t just been “wagging the dog”, they’ve been wagging us to maintain the desired status-quo of wealth-transfer, empire-building, and war-for-plunder. Enough, I say.
Admitted or not, the American people are “mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.” The tipping point has been reached and the people are done with games. Ron Paul and the ideas he speaks of, as well as the solutions he offers will not be swept under the rug again. Just because the revolution isn’t being televised does not mean it won’t and isn’t occurring. It’s not only occurring, but will overcome. Liberty and the restoration of the Republic will move forward to victory in the hands of the real grassroots, the American people – and they don’t need a complicit media or approval from the “powers that be” to achieve it. As Ron Paul has often said, “An idea whose time has come will not be stopped by any government or any army [media or otherwise].”
Thursday
WHAT I THINK.........SCOTT LAZAROWITZ
It’s bad enough the possibility that there might have been some hanky-panky going on regarding the vote count at the Iowa Straw Poll this week, in which Ron Paul received 4,671 votes to Michele Bachmann’s 4,823, a difference of just 152 votes. But to see one national media outlet after another completely ignoring Dr. Paul’s virtual tie for the #1 spot, and others who continue to dismiss Paul as "fringe," despite Paul’s being the most mainstream and commonsensical of all the candidates, is amazing.
The shills for the State do not see how obvious they are now. And the shills aren’t just the left-biased news media, but on the right as well. In his loving devotion to the State, Rush Limbaugh said, regarding the GOP’s giving Ron Paul any actual attention, "This is nuts on parade."
Oh, really, Mr. Limbaugh? And whose "Operation Chaos" scheme was it that helped give us the tyrannical President Obama? Hmmm?
"Nuts," indeed.
I dare any of the Iowa or national news reporters to interview people on the street and ask if they were of the 4,671 people who voted for Ron Paul, and, if so, ask them why they voted for Paul. You will find answers not in the "fringe," or in the land of ignorance and fantasy as with supporters of some of those other candidates. No, you will find people who believe in and understand the ideas of freedom and peace, and who want there to be a free and prosperous America for their future generations.
So many Americans now have been cradled by Big Daddy Government. Economically and culturally Americans have become infantilized, and their coma-like passivity is being disturbed by this Ron Paul person, who dares to advocate independence, and that people grow up and be responsible for their lives and stop being babies.
The idea of the fiat money way of life, the use of value-less paper as the sole government-mandated medium of exchange, has been so ingrained, its century-long status quo being challenged makes people very uncomfortable. Ron Paul has been exposing the instability of the whole system, and that frightens people.
So, rather than deal with reality as Paul suggests, the pundits and the government groupies of mainstream news would prefer to just continue sucking their thumbs and hope for some magical cure, as the Limbaugh-Romney-Obama-Krugman statists hope for.
The people who snub those who advocate a challenge to the status quo and a challenge to government-controlled money and banking, government-controlled medicine, and a challenge to the U.S. government’s immoral and bankrupting wars of aggression – aggressions that do nothing but provoke foreigners to act against us – the people who close the door to the challenger and keep it open for the statists, despite all the destruction the State has wrought, is further confirmation of my assertion that statism is a sickness.
But why do we – the people who just want to live our lives and be left alone, and who mind our own business and do not support acts of aggression against others – why do we have to suffer at the hands of these statists? Ron Paul is advocating for our freedom and independence, that we have a right to live our lives, without aggression and intrusions into our lives and businesses by our neighbors and by the government. We have a right to trade freely with others without Big Daddy Government’s permission, we have a right to travel freely without being cancer-scanned and groped by sickos or asked to show our papers, and we have a right to earn a living without being harassed and having our labor enslaved by the State.
The media act as though that’s too much for us to ask and too much for Ron Paul to advocate, so the media babyishly snub him and his unapologetic message of freedom and peace.
Ron Paul wants to remove the government’s monopoly in money production and distribution, allow for competition in currencies, and have money that is backed by something of actual value, like gold and silver. Dr. Paul understands that paper money leads to tyranny. Paul wants to undo the current institutionalized irresponsibility of letting banks engage in risky investments and not being held accountable, that allows the banks to get bailed out by the taxpayers and by future generations via the government’s perpetual debt machine.
Paul understands that GM should have been made to go bankrupt. All businesses that are run irresponsibly or unprofitably need to restructure themselves or close, including banks as well. The problem with "Too Big To Fail" is that the whole banking and monetary system is a government-corporate cartel that protects the top bankers from accountability, and restricts entrepreneurs’ right of free entry into the field.
We had much more freedom, and much more prosperity, growth and progress in the years prior to the creation of the Federal Reserve. With freedom there is prosperity. In total contrast, in the past century of government usurpations and intrusions, we have had stagflation, wars of aggression, corporatism, and now the inevitable collapse of the system, a collapse that Paul wants to avoid.
But these ideas apparently are too much for our news media government flunkies. As the State has grown larger and larger by each generation, the news media, the intellectuals and academics have shrunk in their capacity toward intellectual curiosity, discovery and searching for the truth. The State and its compulsory powers tend to stifle questioning and challenging of its authority, and its power has an allure to it that seems to have been just too tempting for the journalistic elites to resist.
In his article, Natural Elites, Intellectuals, and the State, economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe noted how the change occurred within intellectuals from being more independent to being State apologists:
If one donor or sponsor no longer supported (intellectuals), many others existed who would happily fill the gap. Indeed, intellectual and cultural life flourished the most, and the independence of intellectuals was the greatest, where the position of the king or the central government was relatively weak and that of the natural elites had remained relatively strong.
A fundamental change in the relationship between the state, natural elites, and intellectuals only occurred with the transition from monarchical to democratic rule. It was the inflated price of justice and the perversions of ancient law by kings as monopolistic judges and peacekeepers that motivated the historical opposition against monarchy. But confusion as to the causes of this phenomenon prevailed. There were those who recognized correctly that the problem was with monopoly, not with elites or nobility. However, they were far outnumbered by those who erroneously blamed the elitist character of the ruler for the problem, and who advocated maintaining the monopoly of law and law enforcement and merely replacing the king and the highly visible royal pomp with the "people" and the presumed decency of the "common man." …
A "tragedy of the commons" was created. Everyone, not just the king, was now entitled to try to grab everyone else's private property. The consequences were more government exploitation (taxation); the deterioration of law to the point where the idea of a body of universal and immutable principles of justice disappeared and was replaced by the idea of law as legislation… and an increase in the social rate of time preference (increased present-orientation)…
…while the natural elites were being destroyed, intellectuals assumed a more prominent and powerful position in society. Indeed, to a large extent they have achieved their goal and have become the ruling class, controlling the state and functioning as monopolistic judge…
Now, this is not to suggest that people such as Rush Limbaugh, Chris Wallace or Candy Crowley are "intellectuals," but they are amongst the so-called news "journalists" of the day, which is part of the crowd of news and pundits, academia, the professional economists and those in pop culture who shill for the State and its constant expanded power over the infantilized lives of the people.
When someone such as Ron Paul says he wants the people to have their freedom – that is, freedom from the State’s reaching into their private personal and economic lives – and who actually speaks in terms of morality (e.g. it’s immoral to start wars of aggression against other countries who were of no threat to us), and if Ron Paul’s proposals result in shrinking the State’s size and power, that seems to be a huge threat to the thumb-sucking apologists of the State. Certainly more than any threat from government’s destroying the economy, forcing future generations into debt slavery, provoking foreigners to retaliate against us, or from the government’s own police state.
As Dr. Paul stated, "We are trying to reverse 100 years of history, the change from a republic to an empire…" Apparently, Paul agrees with Murray Rothbard, who called for an outright repeal of the 20th Century:
Heaven forfend! Who would want to repeal the 20th century, the century of horror, the century of collectivism, the century of mass destruction and genocide, who would want to repeal that! Well, we propose to do just that.
With the inspiration of the death of the Soviet Union before us, we now know that it can be done. We shall break the clock of social democracy. We shall break the clock of the Great Society. We shall break the clock of the welfare state. We shall break the clock of the New Deal. We shall break the clock of Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom and perpetual war. We shall repeal the 20th century.
One of the most inspiring and wonderful sights of our time was to see the peoples of the Soviet Union rising up…to tear down in their fury the statues of Lenin, to obliterate the Leninist legacy. We, too, shall tear down all the statues of Franklin D. Roosevelt, of Harry Truman, of Woodrow Wilson, melt them down and beat them into plowshares and pruning hooks, and usher in a 21st century of peace, freedom, and prosperity.
I’m verklempt.
The shills for the State do not see how obvious they are now. And the shills aren’t just the left-biased news media, but on the right as well. In his loving devotion to the State, Rush Limbaugh said, regarding the GOP’s giving Ron Paul any actual attention, "This is nuts on parade."
Oh, really, Mr. Limbaugh? And whose "Operation Chaos" scheme was it that helped give us the tyrannical President Obama? Hmmm?
"Nuts," indeed.
I dare any of the Iowa or national news reporters to interview people on the street and ask if they were of the 4,671 people who voted for Ron Paul, and, if so, ask them why they voted for Paul. You will find answers not in the "fringe," or in the land of ignorance and fantasy as with supporters of some of those other candidates. No, you will find people who believe in and understand the ideas of freedom and peace, and who want there to be a free and prosperous America for their future generations.
So many Americans now have been cradled by Big Daddy Government. Economically and culturally Americans have become infantilized, and their coma-like passivity is being disturbed by this Ron Paul person, who dares to advocate independence, and that people grow up and be responsible for their lives and stop being babies.
The idea of the fiat money way of life, the use of value-less paper as the sole government-mandated medium of exchange, has been so ingrained, its century-long status quo being challenged makes people very uncomfortable. Ron Paul has been exposing the instability of the whole system, and that frightens people.
So, rather than deal with reality as Paul suggests, the pundits and the government groupies of mainstream news would prefer to just continue sucking their thumbs and hope for some magical cure, as the Limbaugh-Romney-Obama-Krugman statists hope for.
The people who snub those who advocate a challenge to the status quo and a challenge to government-controlled money and banking, government-controlled medicine, and a challenge to the U.S. government’s immoral and bankrupting wars of aggression – aggressions that do nothing but provoke foreigners to act against us – the people who close the door to the challenger and keep it open for the statists, despite all the destruction the State has wrought, is further confirmation of my assertion that statism is a sickness.
But why do we – the people who just want to live our lives and be left alone, and who mind our own business and do not support acts of aggression against others – why do we have to suffer at the hands of these statists? Ron Paul is advocating for our freedom and independence, that we have a right to live our lives, without aggression and intrusions into our lives and businesses by our neighbors and by the government. We have a right to trade freely with others without Big Daddy Government’s permission, we have a right to travel freely without being cancer-scanned and groped by sickos or asked to show our papers, and we have a right to earn a living without being harassed and having our labor enslaved by the State.
The media act as though that’s too much for us to ask and too much for Ron Paul to advocate, so the media babyishly snub him and his unapologetic message of freedom and peace.
Ron Paul wants to remove the government’s monopoly in money production and distribution, allow for competition in currencies, and have money that is backed by something of actual value, like gold and silver. Dr. Paul understands that paper money leads to tyranny. Paul wants to undo the current institutionalized irresponsibility of letting banks engage in risky investments and not being held accountable, that allows the banks to get bailed out by the taxpayers and by future generations via the government’s perpetual debt machine.
Paul understands that GM should have been made to go bankrupt. All businesses that are run irresponsibly or unprofitably need to restructure themselves or close, including banks as well. The problem with "Too Big To Fail" is that the whole banking and monetary system is a government-corporate cartel that protects the top bankers from accountability, and restricts entrepreneurs’ right of free entry into the field.
We had much more freedom, and much more prosperity, growth and progress in the years prior to the creation of the Federal Reserve. With freedom there is prosperity. In total contrast, in the past century of government usurpations and intrusions, we have had stagflation, wars of aggression, corporatism, and now the inevitable collapse of the system, a collapse that Paul wants to avoid.
But these ideas apparently are too much for our news media government flunkies. As the State has grown larger and larger by each generation, the news media, the intellectuals and academics have shrunk in their capacity toward intellectual curiosity, discovery and searching for the truth. The State and its compulsory powers tend to stifle questioning and challenging of its authority, and its power has an allure to it that seems to have been just too tempting for the journalistic elites to resist.
In his article, Natural Elites, Intellectuals, and the State, economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe noted how the change occurred within intellectuals from being more independent to being State apologists:
If one donor or sponsor no longer supported (intellectuals), many others existed who would happily fill the gap. Indeed, intellectual and cultural life flourished the most, and the independence of intellectuals was the greatest, where the position of the king or the central government was relatively weak and that of the natural elites had remained relatively strong.
A fundamental change in the relationship between the state, natural elites, and intellectuals only occurred with the transition from monarchical to democratic rule. It was the inflated price of justice and the perversions of ancient law by kings as monopolistic judges and peacekeepers that motivated the historical opposition against monarchy. But confusion as to the causes of this phenomenon prevailed. There were those who recognized correctly that the problem was with monopoly, not with elites or nobility. However, they were far outnumbered by those who erroneously blamed the elitist character of the ruler for the problem, and who advocated maintaining the monopoly of law and law enforcement and merely replacing the king and the highly visible royal pomp with the "people" and the presumed decency of the "common man." …
A "tragedy of the commons" was created. Everyone, not just the king, was now entitled to try to grab everyone else's private property. The consequences were more government exploitation (taxation); the deterioration of law to the point where the idea of a body of universal and immutable principles of justice disappeared and was replaced by the idea of law as legislation… and an increase in the social rate of time preference (increased present-orientation)…
…while the natural elites were being destroyed, intellectuals assumed a more prominent and powerful position in society. Indeed, to a large extent they have achieved their goal and have become the ruling class, controlling the state and functioning as monopolistic judge…
Now, this is not to suggest that people such as Rush Limbaugh, Chris Wallace or Candy Crowley are "intellectuals," but they are amongst the so-called news "journalists" of the day, which is part of the crowd of news and pundits, academia, the professional economists and those in pop culture who shill for the State and its constant expanded power over the infantilized lives of the people.
When someone such as Ron Paul says he wants the people to have their freedom – that is, freedom from the State’s reaching into their private personal and economic lives – and who actually speaks in terms of morality (e.g. it’s immoral to start wars of aggression against other countries who were of no threat to us), and if Ron Paul’s proposals result in shrinking the State’s size and power, that seems to be a huge threat to the thumb-sucking apologists of the State. Certainly more than any threat from government’s destroying the economy, forcing future generations into debt slavery, provoking foreigners to retaliate against us, or from the government’s own police state.
As Dr. Paul stated, "We are trying to reverse 100 years of history, the change from a republic to an empire…" Apparently, Paul agrees with Murray Rothbard, who called for an outright repeal of the 20th Century:
Heaven forfend! Who would want to repeal the 20th century, the century of horror, the century of collectivism, the century of mass destruction and genocide, who would want to repeal that! Well, we propose to do just that.
With the inspiration of the death of the Soviet Union before us, we now know that it can be done. We shall break the clock of social democracy. We shall break the clock of the Great Society. We shall break the clock of the welfare state. We shall break the clock of the New Deal. We shall break the clock of Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom and perpetual war. We shall repeal the 20th century.
One of the most inspiring and wonderful sights of our time was to see the peoples of the Soviet Union rising up…to tear down in their fury the statues of Lenin, to obliterate the Leninist legacy. We, too, shall tear down all the statues of Franklin D. Roosevelt, of Harry Truman, of Woodrow Wilson, melt them down and beat them into plowshares and pruning hooks, and usher in a 21st century of peace, freedom, and prosperity.
I’m verklempt.
Tuesday
S & P STATES THE OBVIOUS
Politicians did not get much time to pat themselves on the back for supposedly rescuing the economy with the debt limit deal last week. The ink was barely dry when Standard & Poor's downgraded the US debt ratings anyway, roiling world financial markets. Anyone who has taken an honest look at the government's fiscal situation, taken into account how Washington works and the direction it is going would have a very difficult time arguing with S&P's decision, although a strong case can be made that this was too incremental a downgrade and that it took far too long for S&P to admit the obvious.
Nonetheless, the administration nitpicked over a $2 trillion "mistake". S&P rejoined with the fact that $2 trillion here or there hardly makes a difference in the time frame under discussion. That, if nothing else, should tell you the magnitude of the problem. $2 trillion has become a drop in the bucket.
S&P cited Congress's inability to act like grownups and make necessary, meaningful cuts, which is true. I must take issue however, with their suggestion that tax increases are part of the answer. Taking capital out of the private sector, where it can create real value in the form of new jobs and products, and instead giving it to Washington to waste and squander is not the solution. Tax increases may seem penny-wise to some, but in reality they would be very pound-foolish. The government currently takes in $2.2 trillion in taxes per year, which is far too much already. It spends $3.7 trillion, which is ridiculous and criminal. The problem is runaway government spending, not the American people having too much money.
And yet we can't even have a serious discussion about bringing our troops home and ending our expensive occupations around the world – things the president used to claim to favor!
Even without this downgrade, major investors are waking up to what lies down the road for the United States in fiscal terms. China is showing more signs of losing its taste for our debt. Others are following suit. What we are about to see is the end of the dollar as the reserve currency of the world. When that happens, we will no longer be in a position to have pretend debates about things we probably should spend a little bit less on - we will be forced to implement serious spending cuts as our sources of credit dry up. Of course, we can try to postpone the day of reckoning by printing more money but the resulting “inflation tax” will be far worse than a reduction in government benefits.
Hyperinflation devastates the middle class. After Weimar Germany hyper-inflated their currency in the 1920s, an entire life savings couldn't buy a postage stamp. The bank wouldn't even send customers a check for all the money they had saved their whole lives. It wasn't worth the paper it was printed on or the stamp to send it. This is what is meant when it is said that the middle class gets wiped out. The pieces for this to happen here are all falling into place, and have been since 1971. The only way to avoid that sort of chaos now is for Congress to immediately reduce federal spending and take the Constitution seriously again. The welfare/warfare state will end either way, but winding it down responsibly is a far better way to do it.
Nonetheless, the administration nitpicked over a $2 trillion "mistake". S&P rejoined with the fact that $2 trillion here or there hardly makes a difference in the time frame under discussion. That, if nothing else, should tell you the magnitude of the problem. $2 trillion has become a drop in the bucket.
S&P cited Congress's inability to act like grownups and make necessary, meaningful cuts, which is true. I must take issue however, with their suggestion that tax increases are part of the answer. Taking capital out of the private sector, where it can create real value in the form of new jobs and products, and instead giving it to Washington to waste and squander is not the solution. Tax increases may seem penny-wise to some, but in reality they would be very pound-foolish. The government currently takes in $2.2 trillion in taxes per year, which is far too much already. It spends $3.7 trillion, which is ridiculous and criminal. The problem is runaway government spending, not the American people having too much money.
And yet we can't even have a serious discussion about bringing our troops home and ending our expensive occupations around the world – things the president used to claim to favor!
Even without this downgrade, major investors are waking up to what lies down the road for the United States in fiscal terms. China is showing more signs of losing its taste for our debt. Others are following suit. What we are about to see is the end of the dollar as the reserve currency of the world. When that happens, we will no longer be in a position to have pretend debates about things we probably should spend a little bit less on - we will be forced to implement serious spending cuts as our sources of credit dry up. Of course, we can try to postpone the day of reckoning by printing more money but the resulting “inflation tax” will be far worse than a reduction in government benefits.
Hyperinflation devastates the middle class. After Weimar Germany hyper-inflated their currency in the 1920s, an entire life savings couldn't buy a postage stamp. The bank wouldn't even send customers a check for all the money they had saved their whole lives. It wasn't worth the paper it was printed on or the stamp to send it. This is what is meant when it is said that the middle class gets wiped out. The pieces for this to happen here are all falling into place, and have been since 1971. The only way to avoid that sort of chaos now is for Congress to immediately reduce federal spending and take the Constitution seriously again. The welfare/warfare state will end either way, but winding it down responsibly is a far better way to do it.
Monday
WHAT I THINK.......KAREN KWIATKOWSKI
The ongoing media blackout on all things Ron Paul is somewhat curious. One blogger calls the Meet the Press crowd knuckleheaded for their omissive reporting of winners and losers. Headlines blare, "Bachmann First, Pawlenty Third!" as if, by not saying Ron Paul’s name and crediting him with his earned reward, they can create an alter-reality.
Second is not first. Bachmann’s and Dr. Ron Paul’s 28.6% and 27.7%, respectively – less than a percentage apart, is a great horse race. Bachmann won by a nose, they would say. If this were the Kentucky Derby, we’d be on the edge of our seats focused entirely on Paul and Bachmann, not focusing excessively about horses at the back of the back, or those hoping to race later.
Real horse races start off at the same point in time and space. Bachmann may have had a bit of a head start in Iowa – although familiarity may also breed contempt, so the degree of that advantage is not known. The Bachmann campaign’s purchase and distribution of 6,000 straw poll voting tickets (where a third of those went uncast) also sheds real light on the fundamental power of the very different Paul strategy, and the wide and compelling appeal of his liberty, peace, and small government message.
The omission and outright denial of the intense and growing Ron Paul phenomenon is useful because it tells us many things – some we knew, and some we may not realize.
Mainstream media and the GOP itself seems to be ignoring that the Iowa Straw poll showed, for the first time in this poll’s history, a whopping 56% of the voters chose budget hawks, with a proven record of voting "No" on more borrowing. The Cut, Cap, and Balance baloney was pushed by the Republicans in Name Only on every other party member. Paul and Bachmann were among a handful that resisted. Iowa voters, in a state as heavily subsidized and dependent on federal largesse as any other state, seem to appreciate the need for Washington to spend less, borrow less, promise less, receive less.
Media analysts are also not talking about the fact that Paul and Bachmann are popular because they are seen as calmly uncompromising. In Dr. Paul’s case, we have a wise, kind and gentlemanly statesman who is always gentle in his policy rebukes, preferring to educate everyone he can on the hows and the whys of limited government. Bachmann, to her credit, promotes an image of a politician who will hold to her principles, not bend to the party elders, or to the good old boys in the House of Representatives. She has been ladylike in her reaction to a number of slights from her fellow GOP’ers, the paranoid left, and government-co-opted media. Many of the attacks on Bachmann have been sexist, related to her photogenicism, her aches and pains, her husband’s activities, and her similarities to Sarah Palin rather than whether her candidacy can be categorized as neoconservative, social conservative or populist.
The Iowa straw poll also indicates that there is major division in the GOP – conservatives in and out of the Republican Party, independents, constitutionalists and libertarians find themselves searching for representation. These people – the majority of voters in this country when taken altogether – want a kind of honest simplicity in their politicians. This majority of Americans believe that war should be fought only in defense of America, and that lobbyists, massive international banks and corporations should not be creating policy in D.C. This majority of Americans value the idea of independence and self-ownership. They also value the idea of community helping those in need. This majority of Americans want an equal opportunity on an even playing field, and I suspect, more than anything they want their money’s worth from our extremely expensive federal government. They want to know that the government won’t inflate away their entitlements, but they also want to know that their children and grandchildren will not suffer for decades of baby boomer excess now that the bills are coming due.
This may be a major reason for media and GOP silence – and outright mockery – of Ron Paul and his rock solid and growing constituency across the land. Paul’s popularity today is glaring proof of American disgust with years of Republican Party lies about their frugality, honesty, common sense, and good stewardship of the Republic. Of course, many who fell for Obama’s program in 2008 are also disgusted, and they now see that most politicians and presidents say whatever they think we wish to hear, only to conform with an inherited status quo, and willingly compromise, sit, roll and beg.
But there is another reason for the noticeable government and mainstream media silence on Ron Paul’s repeated success, and his ever-growing popularity. Ron Paul can win, and if he achieved the GOP nomination he would be our next president. Ron Paul can cut short what will otherwise be an eight-year term of Obama, and end what has been a frantic 12 year federal spending spree that will ultimately lead to serious default, renegotiation and writing down of major categories of debt, and an inflation-ravaged entitlement collapse at home. Gold, guns and survival skills, private security forces, underground food networks, and an explosion in decentralized alternate energies – along with a collapse of governing structures, services, and public schools in many rural or otherwise under populated areas – all this is coming. Leaders who understand how this future was constructed, leaders who engender trust and confidence, and leaders who can wisely and quickly oversee the federal retrenchment that must and will occur – such leaders are few and far between.
Ron Paul is such a leader. We see the field – it contains the sadly overwhelmed Obama, as arrogant, as fascist-friendly and as warlike as FDR, and all the strident Keynesians clawing to the microphone, calling themselves Republicans, and Ron Paul. Of all the men or women we could choose to gently deliver this country through its very difficult rebirth into a new constitutionalism, a new liberty, and a new era of prosperity – Ron Paul is the people’s choice. If the people were truly free to choose, they would choose Ron Paul. This is the idea that so terrifies the parasitical political class, and its media handmaids. They cannot bear to say his name. But you can trust that they are closely watching the Ron Paul revolution unfold across the country, as they nervously feed on the decimated and rotting carcass of a once proud Republic.
Second is not first. Bachmann’s and Dr. Ron Paul’s 28.6% and 27.7%, respectively – less than a percentage apart, is a great horse race. Bachmann won by a nose, they would say. If this were the Kentucky Derby, we’d be on the edge of our seats focused entirely on Paul and Bachmann, not focusing excessively about horses at the back of the back, or those hoping to race later.
Real horse races start off at the same point in time and space. Bachmann may have had a bit of a head start in Iowa – although familiarity may also breed contempt, so the degree of that advantage is not known. The Bachmann campaign’s purchase and distribution of 6,000 straw poll voting tickets (where a third of those went uncast) also sheds real light on the fundamental power of the very different Paul strategy, and the wide and compelling appeal of his liberty, peace, and small government message.
The omission and outright denial of the intense and growing Ron Paul phenomenon is useful because it tells us many things – some we knew, and some we may not realize.
Mainstream media and the GOP itself seems to be ignoring that the Iowa Straw poll showed, for the first time in this poll’s history, a whopping 56% of the voters chose budget hawks, with a proven record of voting "No" on more borrowing. The Cut, Cap, and Balance baloney was pushed by the Republicans in Name Only on every other party member. Paul and Bachmann were among a handful that resisted. Iowa voters, in a state as heavily subsidized and dependent on federal largesse as any other state, seem to appreciate the need for Washington to spend less, borrow less, promise less, receive less.
Media analysts are also not talking about the fact that Paul and Bachmann are popular because they are seen as calmly uncompromising. In Dr. Paul’s case, we have a wise, kind and gentlemanly statesman who is always gentle in his policy rebukes, preferring to educate everyone he can on the hows and the whys of limited government. Bachmann, to her credit, promotes an image of a politician who will hold to her principles, not bend to the party elders, or to the good old boys in the House of Representatives. She has been ladylike in her reaction to a number of slights from her fellow GOP’ers, the paranoid left, and government-co-opted media. Many of the attacks on Bachmann have been sexist, related to her photogenicism, her aches and pains, her husband’s activities, and her similarities to Sarah Palin rather than whether her candidacy can be categorized as neoconservative, social conservative or populist.
The Iowa straw poll also indicates that there is major division in the GOP – conservatives in and out of the Republican Party, independents, constitutionalists and libertarians find themselves searching for representation. These people – the majority of voters in this country when taken altogether – want a kind of honest simplicity in their politicians. This majority of Americans believe that war should be fought only in defense of America, and that lobbyists, massive international banks and corporations should not be creating policy in D.C. This majority of Americans value the idea of independence and self-ownership. They also value the idea of community helping those in need. This majority of Americans want an equal opportunity on an even playing field, and I suspect, more than anything they want their money’s worth from our extremely expensive federal government. They want to know that the government won’t inflate away their entitlements, but they also want to know that their children and grandchildren will not suffer for decades of baby boomer excess now that the bills are coming due.
This may be a major reason for media and GOP silence – and outright mockery – of Ron Paul and his rock solid and growing constituency across the land. Paul’s popularity today is glaring proof of American disgust with years of Republican Party lies about their frugality, honesty, common sense, and good stewardship of the Republic. Of course, many who fell for Obama’s program in 2008 are also disgusted, and they now see that most politicians and presidents say whatever they think we wish to hear, only to conform with an inherited status quo, and willingly compromise, sit, roll and beg.
But there is another reason for the noticeable government and mainstream media silence on Ron Paul’s repeated success, and his ever-growing popularity. Ron Paul can win, and if he achieved the GOP nomination he would be our next president. Ron Paul can cut short what will otherwise be an eight-year term of Obama, and end what has been a frantic 12 year federal spending spree that will ultimately lead to serious default, renegotiation and writing down of major categories of debt, and an inflation-ravaged entitlement collapse at home. Gold, guns and survival skills, private security forces, underground food networks, and an explosion in decentralized alternate energies – along with a collapse of governing structures, services, and public schools in many rural or otherwise under populated areas – all this is coming. Leaders who understand how this future was constructed, leaders who engender trust and confidence, and leaders who can wisely and quickly oversee the federal retrenchment that must and will occur – such leaders are few and far between.
Ron Paul is such a leader. We see the field – it contains the sadly overwhelmed Obama, as arrogant, as fascist-friendly and as warlike as FDR, and all the strident Keynesians clawing to the microphone, calling themselves Republicans, and Ron Paul. Of all the men or women we could choose to gently deliver this country through its very difficult rebirth into a new constitutionalism, a new liberty, and a new era of prosperity – Ron Paul is the people’s choice. If the people were truly free to choose, they would choose Ron Paul. This is the idea that so terrifies the parasitical political class, and its media handmaids. They cannot bear to say his name. But you can trust that they are closely watching the Ron Paul revolution unfold across the country, as they nervously feed on the decimated and rotting carcass of a once proud Republic.
Wednesday
SUPER CONGRESS A GIFT TO K STREET
The Super Congress created by the recent debt ceiling increase deal is a typical example of something nefarious attached to a bigger bill that is rushed through Congress without giving Members ample opportunity to consider the full ramifications. This commission may turn into an early Christmas present for the well-heeled lobbyists of K Street. This is because the commission presents a huge opportunity for lobbying firms to sneak their client's pet projects and issues into whatever legislation is created by the commission. The fact that automatic cuts to defense are named if the committee deadlocks simply signals to the military industrial complex to bring their A game to the lobbying effort.
One red flag I am constantly aware of in my position as a Congressman is that highly complex and convoluted legislation frequently has dangerous provisions hidden in the fine print. Elaborate legislative packages force lawmakers to take the bad with the good, and often if they refuse, they are accused of voting against the positive provision - never mind the blatant Constitutional violations in the bill, the spending, the waste, and the unchecked expansion of government. I don't usually have to read too much of a bill like that before encountering something unconstitutional, or simply unwise. Then I have to vote no.
That doesn't seem to be the case with a majority of legislators, unfortunately. In order to ram through one special interest's favorable treatment or giveaway, a certain amount of horse-trading is done. The end result is mammoth bills with myriads of unrelated provisions that favor those with the best lobbyists at the expense of everyone else.
The creation of a 12 member committee to preside over $1.5 trillion in spending decisions, and the exclusion of the rest of Congress also means lobbying firms can focus their efforts on an anointed few, which is certainly more manageable for them than having to deal with the entire Congress. Every cut considered will, of course, have a recipient on the other end whose livelihood is being threatened. The probable outcome is that any cuts realized will be more a function of lobbying prowess than the merits or demerits of the actual programs on the chopping block.
Make no mistake - I am enthusiastically for cutting government spending. The goal should be to eventually reduce government down to the size and scope of its constitutional limitations. However, the process of getting there must also be constitutional. Concentrating such special authority to fast track legislation affecting so many special interests to a small, select committee is nothing more than an unprecedented power grab. Only fears of an impending catastrophe could have motivated Members to allow this legislation to be rushed through Congress. The founding fathers had strong feelings about taxation without representation and under no circumstances would they have felt excluding 98% of Congress from fiscal decisions was appropriate.
I see nothing good coming out of this Super Congress. I suspect it will be highly vulnerable to corruption and special interests. No benefit can come from such careless disregard of the Founders' design.
One red flag I am constantly aware of in my position as a Congressman is that highly complex and convoluted legislation frequently has dangerous provisions hidden in the fine print. Elaborate legislative packages force lawmakers to take the bad with the good, and often if they refuse, they are accused of voting against the positive provision - never mind the blatant Constitutional violations in the bill, the spending, the waste, and the unchecked expansion of government. I don't usually have to read too much of a bill like that before encountering something unconstitutional, or simply unwise. Then I have to vote no.
That doesn't seem to be the case with a majority of legislators, unfortunately. In order to ram through one special interest's favorable treatment or giveaway, a certain amount of horse-trading is done. The end result is mammoth bills with myriads of unrelated provisions that favor those with the best lobbyists at the expense of everyone else.
The creation of a 12 member committee to preside over $1.5 trillion in spending decisions, and the exclusion of the rest of Congress also means lobbying firms can focus their efforts on an anointed few, which is certainly more manageable for them than having to deal with the entire Congress. Every cut considered will, of course, have a recipient on the other end whose livelihood is being threatened. The probable outcome is that any cuts realized will be more a function of lobbying prowess than the merits or demerits of the actual programs on the chopping block.
Make no mistake - I am enthusiastically for cutting government spending. The goal should be to eventually reduce government down to the size and scope of its constitutional limitations. However, the process of getting there must also be constitutional. Concentrating such special authority to fast track legislation affecting so many special interests to a small, select committee is nothing more than an unprecedented power grab. Only fears of an impending catastrophe could have motivated Members to allow this legislation to be rushed through Congress. The founding fathers had strong feelings about taxation without representation and under no circumstances would they have felt excluding 98% of Congress from fiscal decisions was appropriate.
I see nothing good coming out of this Super Congress. I suspect it will be highly vulnerable to corruption and special interests. No benefit can come from such careless disregard of the Founders' design.
Thursday
WHAT I THINK......CRAIG WHITE
In the May 6 debate among Republican candidates in South Carolina, the moderator got a good laugh when he put the following question to Ron Paul:
"Congressman Paul, you say that the federal government should stay out of people’s personal habits. You say marijuana, cocaine, even heroine, should be legal if states want to permit it. You feel the same about prostitution and gay marriage. Question, sir: why should social conservatives in South Carolina vote for you for President?"
Before looking at Paul’s answer, let’s consider where social conservatives stand in their political battle. Most, but not all, are political conservatives as well (although that term may be difficult to define). Since the consciences of evangelical Christians were touched by legalized abortion in the 1970s, in national politics, the politically conservative majority of social conservatives have had one big target, one political fortress they have stormed every four years: the presidency. Sometimes they win, sometimes they lose, but every four years they take up weapons and armor and go into battle. The war plan since the late 1970s has been: elect a conservative Republican president, who will nominate conservative justices to the Supreme Court. Seeing that Roe v. Wade is unconstitutional, the eventual conservative majority on the Court will someday overturn Roe v. Wade. Win at the top, and force the rest of the country to go along. At the same time, perhaps paradoxically, many social conservatives have hoped for what Ronald Reagan called for: a smaller federal government with less of a role in American life.
Let’s be frank: while there have been some social conservative successes in changing people’s minds (more Americans now call themselves "pro-life," for example), and some little political victories here and there, overall, the political strategy is just not working. From abortion to gay marriage to federalism, it has been a long, slow, rolling defeat for social conservatives. The justices nominated by Republican presidents have been the greatest disappointment. Very few of these have shown any sign of wanting to overturn Roe v. Wade. Even if they had, judging by the last three decades, the American people as a whole are not really interested in leaving a Republican in the White House for long enough for the strategy to work. At the rate we are going, 200 years from now there will not be a "conservative" majority on the Court on abortion or other social issues – and if there were at some point, there would be a new "liberal" majority soon after, which would reverse it.
The old conservative slogan of getting the government (meaning for most the federal government) off people’s backs wasn’t even put into action by Ronald Reagan: the government grew during his eight years. The idea was quietly abandoned by the first George Bush, Reagan’s heir, who made it clear that to him, more freedom and less government was not "kind and gentle." The second George Bush even made "big government conservatism" a thinkable slogan rather than an oxymoron.
After some 35 years of social conservative support for the Republican Party on the federal level, we have a gigantic government, with an enormous military and immense entitlement programs. That government is so deep in debt that our national fiscal credibility was recently questioned even by official rating agencies. (The debt crisis "fix" has done nothing about that problem.) Our government shows no sign of reversing Roe v. Wade on abortion or holding the line on traditional marriage. Our currency is incredibly debased. For over 20 years it has been impossible for poor or middle class people to actually save money, since the interest rate offered doesn’t even keep up with official inflation (and we continue to be taxed on interest, as if it were "income" rather than an attempt to keep up with government-produced shrinkage of the underlying currency in our bank accounts and our pockets). Since the 1970s, real wages have not risen. Manipulated low interest rates led to the now-burst bubble in the only realistic hope for middle class people to stay even with inflation, their housing. The economy and the tax system appear to be rigged in favor of hedge fund managers and big bank CEOs, who, when crisis strikes, get rescued and bonused-up while the middle class gets foreclosed. In short, from a social or traditional conservative point of view, the last few decades have been a scarcely-mitigated disaster.
Yet can someone like Ron Paul really hope for support from social conservatives? After all, social conservatives have a reputation for favoring the kind of approach Michelle Bachman signed up for recently in Iowa with "The Marriage Vow." The basic idea in that pledge is to defend Christian values and encourage Christian virtues through legislation, or constitutional amendments, that will cover the entire United States. To put it another way, they want to increase the power of the Federal government, while Ron Paul wants to slash it. The moderator in that debate got a good laugh because his question resonated. Social conservatives, at least since the late 1970s, are known for approaching the political battlefield the way Wellington approached Napoleon at Waterloo: with the declared intention of decisively defeating their enemies and sending them into exile.
Paul responded to the question about marijuana, cocaine, heroin, etc. with an answer that is unusual on the American political scene, but one based in the very earliest American approach to politics: it’s about liberty. "They will [support me] if they understand my defense of liberty is the defense of their right to practice their religion and say their prayers where they want and practice their life." We have to "protect liberty across the board," without "inconsistency." "If not, you’re going to end up with government that’s going to tell us what we can eat, and drink, and whatever." To this, he added another note that ought to appeal to social conservatives: an appeal to personal responsibility. "How many people here would use heroine if it was legal? I’ll bet nobody would put their hand up. ‘Oh yeah, I need the government to take care of me. I don’t want to use heroine, so I need these laws.’"
In his short, time-pressured answer, Paul also hinted at but did not express what is really the heart of his approach to politics in the United States. That approach might appeal to social conservatives if they would really consider it. First, responding to the words "federal government" in the question, he used the phrase, "if I leave it to the states, it’s going to be up to the states." Packed into this handful of words is the fact that Ron Paul is a consistent constitutionalist. Here is where Paul is unique: unlike some maverick who grumbles like Ross Perot that we are "off track" somehow, Paul is both a seasoned politician and a consistent thinker and writer with a track record that goes back decades. When he argues that we should go back to the Constitution, he has thought that through even into the details, he means it, and he will talk about it, third rails and all.
In effect, Paul offers a deeply divided electorate a startling compromise: a return to the U.S. Constitution. That compromise could win votes of social conservatives and liberals alike, if he can persuade them that the federal government cannot afford most of what it is doing, and that returning to the Constitution would both save the country from drowning in debt, and leave each state free to make its own choices on most issues. That was, after all, the public aim of the Founders.
The original aim of the writers of the Constitution, written into the document itself, was an amazingly restricted federal government. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution is a very short list of areas in which the Congress is meant to be able to legislate – and the President’s job is to execute the laws, which, again, cover a very few areas. Arguing for the ratification of the Constitution in the Federalist Papers, both James Madison and Alexander Hamilton insisted that the State governments would do far more of the day-to-day work of governing than the federal government, because the federal government’s scope was so limited. Madison poured contempt, in Federalist Papers no. 41, on those who claimed that the "general welfare" clause meant that the legislative powers of the federal government were unlimited, rather than confined to the skeletal list in Article I, Section 8. His scathing attack on this idea begins, "No stronger proof could be given of the distress under which these writers labor for objections, than their stooping to such a misconstruction." Both he and Hamilton assumed throughout the Federalist Papers that the Constitution was written in plain English that normal educated persons could understand, and that the job of the courts ("beyond comparison the weakest" of the three branches of government, wrote Hamilton in no. 78) would be simply to interpret it – not to help it "evolve" to fit a people with evolving ideas (that was the job of the people through the amendment process, not the courts). They also insisted, again and again, that the proposed federal government had limited, defined powers – and actually reading that list in Article I, Section 8 explains how Hamilton could argue with a straight face (in no. 84) that the proposed Constitution would save the people of the United States money, by giving them a cheaper government, considering the state and federal levels together, than they had under the Articles of Confederation.
That shows up the problem with the big strategy of the majority of social conservatives, who expect a conservative president to appoint judges who will overturn Roe v. Wade on constitutional grounds: what about the New Deal, the Great Society, the War on Drugs, and the undeclared foreign wars of the last 60 years? What about the vast body of Federal legislation that has nothing to do with the short list in Article I, Section 8? What about the Patriot Act? None of these are any more constitutional in terms of the clear original intent of the text and those who ratified it than the basically unlimited abortion right proclaimed in Roe v. Wade and subsequent decisions. (The moderator’s question would have been unthinkable to social conservatives in 1788: no one dreamed the federal government would ever get involved in such issues, or would dare to do so without amending the Constitution.) Social conservatives who want to eat their cake and have it too, who think they can get Roe v. Wade overturned on constitutional grounds, but leave the rest of these programs and activities untouched, are either ignorant of the text and original understanding of the Constitution, or deluding themselves, or indulging in rank hypocrisy. If they are intelligent and know any history, it looks like the latter.
The rest of the conservative candidates, and almost all conservative leaders, seem stuck with that "hypocrite" label regarding the Constitution. In that document’s name, they thunder against programs they don’t like, without revealing that they have no intention of dismantling the unconstitutional programs (or stop getting into unconstitutional undeclared wars) that they do like. They appear eager and willing to share the "constitutional hypocrite" label with their supporters. Paul, however, offers an escape from hypocrisy: a consistent originalist approach to the Constitution (as amended, of course). On those grounds, he would begin to put an end to the entire federal welfare and entitlement apparatus, all of which are outside the arena of the powers of Congress as listed in Article I, Section 8. Paul has stated that such programs must be brought to an end completely, but in a gradual way, so as to minimize harm those who have built their lives around them.
Note that this is a far more specific, and sweeping, promise to cut government than Ronald Reagan ever made, and that Paul has the credentials, beyond any other conservative politician, to prove his sincerity on this issue. For decades, he has not voted in favor of programs he believes are unconstitutional (his yes votes are rare indeed). He wants the states and churches and other voluntary organizations to take up the slack, gradually, as the federal government lets go, in anti-poverty efforts – using the money that would be left in their pockets due to a Federalist Papers-sized federal government. He wants individuals to save for their own retirement, and look after their own families. That ought to warm the hearts of social conservatives, and set those of small government conservatives on fire. No other conservative politician is anywhere near this constitutional consistency and credibility on the issue of a smaller federal government. And by the way, on abortion, Paul is on the record calling for Congress to exercise its power, granted in Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution, to exclude the Supreme Court from appellate jurisdiction on the issue, moving it right back to where it was in January 1973, with the states.
Why would anyone on the left, or middle-of-the-road independents, vote for such a program? For two possible reasons: first, the other half of this constitutional consistency concerns the power to declare war, which the Constitution gives to Congress, not the President. As Tom Woods points out, George Washington and many subsequent American presidents understood that they could order the armed forces to defend themselves or America’s territory, but anything beyond that required them to go to Congress for a declaration of war – that they had no power to start wars, only to lead them after Congress started them. This is, in fact, the only serious originalist approach to the text of the Constitution. Whenever Democrats or Republicans have promised to end the wars in recent years, they have forgotten the pledge when they got the power. Left-wing or independent Americans who are tired of seeing their armed forces involved in endless, undeclared wars, and tired of seeing that no vote seems to change that, might just jump at the chance to vote for someone who really would bring the troops home, even if it meant they would have to shift efforts to have government take care of poverty, or to sculpt society as they wish, to the state level. One left-of-center
American who has made that choice is Robin Koerner, who recently called for Democrats who care about "peace and civil liberty" to become "Blue Republicans" for a year and vote for Ron Paul.
Second, more and more Americans, including many independents, appear to be realizing that the government’s official commitments are far beyond its ability to pay in today’s dollars (battered as those are compared to those of even, say, ten years ago). Many of these same Americans realize that the government has a tempting "stealth" escape: gradual further debasement of our money will enable the government to pay its commitments, in money with the same numbers and presidents’ faces, but with vastly reduced value. Creating digital dollars in the trillions with nothing to back them is guaranteed in and of itself to make everything in the world more expensive in dollar terms, but the government can blame oil producers or other wicked foreigners, or greedy corporations, for what it is doing itself. Given the size of entitlements (along with the Pentagon budget), the government’s clear inability to pay them, the Federal Reserve’s full control over ex nihilo currency creation, and the average American’s lack of economic sophistication, who can believe the government is likely (or will want) to resist this sneaky escape from insolvency? Independent voters who see these facts may decide that getting the federal government out from under its crushing obligations honestly is the only approach with a hope of avoiding economic catastrophe.
That leaves one horsefly in the milk jug, from the social conservative point of view: their enthusiasm for military action abroad clashes with Paul’s "non-interventionism" pretty badly. Perhaps Paul’s approach is impossible for them to swallow. There are several arguments in favor of change that social conservatives might heed, however. First, non-intervention is the original foreign policy of the United States. This is the clear message of Washington’s farewell address. It was restated in glowing words by our fifth president, John Quincy Adams: "wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been unfurled, there will [America’s] heart, her benedictions, and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own." Adams continued that an America that used force to change the world for the better would gradually lose her own virtues, gaining instead "an imperial diadem, flashing in false and tarnished luster the murky radiance of dominion and power." Adams, repeating the wisdom of his parents’ generation, the Founders, believed in American "exceptionalism" all right, but not in American power to impose its ways on the world. Like the Founders, he also didn’t believe exceptionalism was guaranteed to last, and impervious to our actions. Even Dwight Eisenhower, hardly a lily-livered liberal, warned Americans of the dangers of an uncontrolled military-industrial complex. This is a current in American thought that was the mainstream for centuries, and perhaps some social conservatives can bring themselves to see it as such. Next, they might even read fellow social conservatives such as Andrew Bacevich for a different perspective on what our military forces are doing and achieving beyond our shores. According to CIA expert Michael Scheuer, the former head of the bin Ladin unit (and no pacifist!), it is not true that "we're hated because of our freedoms…in fact we're hated because of our actions in the Islamic world." Attacks on a non-interventionist U.S. would likely shrink to the level of attacks on, say, Switzerland. (If they hate us for our freedom, why aren’t they attacking the Swiss?)
Social conservatives might also consider my own exhaustive, non-partisan argument in Iraq: the Moral Reckoning that launching the U.S. war in Iraq was unjust according to just war theory. A variety of well-known religious conservatives, including Chuck Colson, Richard Land, George Weigel, Robert George, and Fr. Richard John Neuhaus (RIP), all made brief defenses of the justice of that war before it was launched in 2003. However, there has been little or no serious acknowledgement of the other side of the argument, at least by pro-war religious conservatives. It is true that many of the opponents of the war were "liberals" or even radicals in American terms – but arguments deserve to be heard, no matter where they come from. In the scholastic tradition of the high Middle Ages, no important thesis was considered safely proven until it had been "chewed in the jaws" of a rational disputation. Thomas Aquinas found the best objections available to his own ideas, published them with his ideas, and answered them. Surely the best traditions of social conservatives include a careful look at opposing arguments, and an attempt to answer them. So far, my arguments, far more extensive than any arguing that the Iraq war was just, have not been addressed by those who disagree with me. Some social conservative ought to do it – he or she might even find that my arguments change minds.
But finally, perhaps social conservatives will consider today’s situation in the light of the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Under the Articles of Confederation, taxes were not collected, the bills were not getting paid, and the loose coalition of basically independent states was not getting a lot of respect in the wider world. For a long list of rather ordinary kinds of decisions, the votes of nine out of thirteen states were necessary, and no amendment of the Articles was possible without the states’ unanimous consent. The larger states, like New York and Virginia, were fed up with their inability to over-ride smaller states’ insistence on the status quo in everything that worked in their favor, and wanted a legislature that reflected the population of the states. Smaller states, on the other hand, saw no reason to give up the "one state-one vote" situation. Rhode Island, which was infamous for this approach, had even boycotted the Convention for fear it had nothing to gain from any change. Deadlock seemed cemented into place. When the Convention had come to a standstill, the Great Compromise of 1787 was suggested by the Connecticut delegation: the lower house of the new congress, with certain powers, would provide delegates to each state based on its population, but the upper house, with a different set of powers, would provide equal representation for each state. When the situation seemed impossible, everyone gave something up, and a compromise provided a way forward.
Ron Paul offers the country a unique compromise, a return to constitutional government. The situation is perhaps even more deadlocked than that of 1787. From the perspective of the Founders’ design, our federal government is a flagrantly unconstitutional, bankrupt Leviathan, controlling huge swathes of our lives, trying to control much of the world as well, and spending our great great grandchildren’s notional money to do it. Social conservatives are not changing American minds in large numbers on domestic issues. On foreign policy, their affection for maintaining and expanding military action abroad seems like a major electoral handicap in light of the sweeping election victory of Barack Obama, the only major candidate who had openly opposed the Iraq war. For 2012, one more conservative candidate who offers Americans even more government control over their lives, with more toughness abroad and more national coercion on moral issues, is unlikely even to win the Republican nomination (consider the "moderate" Bushes and McCain). Such a candidate will be a hypocrite on the Constitution – surely an important consideration. If he or she somehow wins the nomination, and somehow wins the general election as well, Americans are almost sure to divide their votes so as to frustrate him or her with a Democratic congress. There are millions of non-theist (or theist but pragmatic) Americans who strongly disagree with social conservatives on what ought to be illegal. Thus, in the best business-as-usual scenario social conservatives are likely to get, the nation would also keep its "imperial diadem," with its "murky radiance of dominion and power," if John Quincy Adams is to be believed. At home, the moral issues stalemate would continue, and the debt burden would go on growing.
Given this choice, might social conservatives consider Ron Paul’s Great Compromise of 2012, a return to constitutional government? Consider again the details: a massive tax cut for all, the end of the death of the dollar by a trillion cuts, and a return of real saving by ordinary Americans. A gradual transfer of almost all the assumed, unconstitutional powers and burdens of the federal government back to the states and the people. A truly defensive "Defense Department." (Under Paul, it might even get back its old, honest name of the War Department.) Liberals would have to give up social engineering on the national level. Due to democracy itself, liberals could work in each state to make it whatever kind of left-leaning welfare state they liked, but social conservatives could go on fighting them on the state level, and could also work in conservative states for whatever laws they liked. New York and California might end up with gay marriage and easy abortion – not much of a change there. Texas or South Carolina, though, might ban them both – a big change. Radicals on the left and right would suffer an end to American attempts to reshape the world – but realists would at least get an American government that would not go broke. Might social conservatives decide it sounds like 1787?
If they don’t, it appears likely Paul will do better than last time around, perhaps far better, but still fall short of the Republican nomination or the presidency. In that case, the political status quo will almost surely continue, with either a Republican or a Democratic nominal head. We will continue to live under what Bacevich calls Washington Rules, a phrase that could describe our domestic as well as foreign policies. Social conservatives will get full-throated pledges of allegiance from Republican candidates, "Tea Party" and otherwise, but, based on decades of evidence…not much else. And perhaps we will stumble down Status Quo Road for another decade or two, the dollar’s decline will gradually halt, and tens of trillions of dollars of misbegotten debt will gradually work themselves out of our system (as in Japan?). Perhaps we will "grow our way out" of our problems, perhaps with tax cuts! If so, we will all forget about that foolish false prophet Ron Paul. But if investors like Jim Rogers, Marc Faber, and Peter Schiff, who predicted the current credit crisis, are right, we will either shrink the welfare/warfare state, or it and its mountain of debts will shrink our economy, soon.
Social conservatives who have hitched your wagon to political conservatism in America: You can’t get everything you might like, you really can’t. You are not a majority in today’s America. If you insist on going for victory, like Wellington at Waterloo, you will instead get the status quo one more time: the independents, the leftists, and the middle-of-the-roaders will throw their weight against you, and all together they outnumber you by a mile. Standard political conservative candidates, if they win, will throw war and some rhetoric in your direction, but not domestic substance. But four more years of the status quo might prove the final straw. Is it time for a new Great Compromise?
"Congressman Paul, you say that the federal government should stay out of people’s personal habits. You say marijuana, cocaine, even heroine, should be legal if states want to permit it. You feel the same about prostitution and gay marriage. Question, sir: why should social conservatives in South Carolina vote for you for President?"
Before looking at Paul’s answer, let’s consider where social conservatives stand in their political battle. Most, but not all, are political conservatives as well (although that term may be difficult to define). Since the consciences of evangelical Christians were touched by legalized abortion in the 1970s, in national politics, the politically conservative majority of social conservatives have had one big target, one political fortress they have stormed every four years: the presidency. Sometimes they win, sometimes they lose, but every four years they take up weapons and armor and go into battle. The war plan since the late 1970s has been: elect a conservative Republican president, who will nominate conservative justices to the Supreme Court. Seeing that Roe v. Wade is unconstitutional, the eventual conservative majority on the Court will someday overturn Roe v. Wade. Win at the top, and force the rest of the country to go along. At the same time, perhaps paradoxically, many social conservatives have hoped for what Ronald Reagan called for: a smaller federal government with less of a role in American life.
Let’s be frank: while there have been some social conservative successes in changing people’s minds (more Americans now call themselves "pro-life," for example), and some little political victories here and there, overall, the political strategy is just not working. From abortion to gay marriage to federalism, it has been a long, slow, rolling defeat for social conservatives. The justices nominated by Republican presidents have been the greatest disappointment. Very few of these have shown any sign of wanting to overturn Roe v. Wade. Even if they had, judging by the last three decades, the American people as a whole are not really interested in leaving a Republican in the White House for long enough for the strategy to work. At the rate we are going, 200 years from now there will not be a "conservative" majority on the Court on abortion or other social issues – and if there were at some point, there would be a new "liberal" majority soon after, which would reverse it.
The old conservative slogan of getting the government (meaning for most the federal government) off people’s backs wasn’t even put into action by Ronald Reagan: the government grew during his eight years. The idea was quietly abandoned by the first George Bush, Reagan’s heir, who made it clear that to him, more freedom and less government was not "kind and gentle." The second George Bush even made "big government conservatism" a thinkable slogan rather than an oxymoron.
After some 35 years of social conservative support for the Republican Party on the federal level, we have a gigantic government, with an enormous military and immense entitlement programs. That government is so deep in debt that our national fiscal credibility was recently questioned even by official rating agencies. (The debt crisis "fix" has done nothing about that problem.) Our government shows no sign of reversing Roe v. Wade on abortion or holding the line on traditional marriage. Our currency is incredibly debased. For over 20 years it has been impossible for poor or middle class people to actually save money, since the interest rate offered doesn’t even keep up with official inflation (and we continue to be taxed on interest, as if it were "income" rather than an attempt to keep up with government-produced shrinkage of the underlying currency in our bank accounts and our pockets). Since the 1970s, real wages have not risen. Manipulated low interest rates led to the now-burst bubble in the only realistic hope for middle class people to stay even with inflation, their housing. The economy and the tax system appear to be rigged in favor of hedge fund managers and big bank CEOs, who, when crisis strikes, get rescued and bonused-up while the middle class gets foreclosed. In short, from a social or traditional conservative point of view, the last few decades have been a scarcely-mitigated disaster.
Yet can someone like Ron Paul really hope for support from social conservatives? After all, social conservatives have a reputation for favoring the kind of approach Michelle Bachman signed up for recently in Iowa with "The Marriage Vow." The basic idea in that pledge is to defend Christian values and encourage Christian virtues through legislation, or constitutional amendments, that will cover the entire United States. To put it another way, they want to increase the power of the Federal government, while Ron Paul wants to slash it. The moderator in that debate got a good laugh because his question resonated. Social conservatives, at least since the late 1970s, are known for approaching the political battlefield the way Wellington approached Napoleon at Waterloo: with the declared intention of decisively defeating their enemies and sending them into exile.
Paul responded to the question about marijuana, cocaine, heroin, etc. with an answer that is unusual on the American political scene, but one based in the very earliest American approach to politics: it’s about liberty. "They will [support me] if they understand my defense of liberty is the defense of their right to practice their religion and say their prayers where they want and practice their life." We have to "protect liberty across the board," without "inconsistency." "If not, you’re going to end up with government that’s going to tell us what we can eat, and drink, and whatever." To this, he added another note that ought to appeal to social conservatives: an appeal to personal responsibility. "How many people here would use heroine if it was legal? I’ll bet nobody would put their hand up. ‘Oh yeah, I need the government to take care of me. I don’t want to use heroine, so I need these laws.’"
In his short, time-pressured answer, Paul also hinted at but did not express what is really the heart of his approach to politics in the United States. That approach might appeal to social conservatives if they would really consider it. First, responding to the words "federal government" in the question, he used the phrase, "if I leave it to the states, it’s going to be up to the states." Packed into this handful of words is the fact that Ron Paul is a consistent constitutionalist. Here is where Paul is unique: unlike some maverick who grumbles like Ross Perot that we are "off track" somehow, Paul is both a seasoned politician and a consistent thinker and writer with a track record that goes back decades. When he argues that we should go back to the Constitution, he has thought that through even into the details, he means it, and he will talk about it, third rails and all.
In effect, Paul offers a deeply divided electorate a startling compromise: a return to the U.S. Constitution. That compromise could win votes of social conservatives and liberals alike, if he can persuade them that the federal government cannot afford most of what it is doing, and that returning to the Constitution would both save the country from drowning in debt, and leave each state free to make its own choices on most issues. That was, after all, the public aim of the Founders.
The original aim of the writers of the Constitution, written into the document itself, was an amazingly restricted federal government. Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution is a very short list of areas in which the Congress is meant to be able to legislate – and the President’s job is to execute the laws, which, again, cover a very few areas. Arguing for the ratification of the Constitution in the Federalist Papers, both James Madison and Alexander Hamilton insisted that the State governments would do far more of the day-to-day work of governing than the federal government, because the federal government’s scope was so limited. Madison poured contempt, in Federalist Papers no. 41, on those who claimed that the "general welfare" clause meant that the legislative powers of the federal government were unlimited, rather than confined to the skeletal list in Article I, Section 8. His scathing attack on this idea begins, "No stronger proof could be given of the distress under which these writers labor for objections, than their stooping to such a misconstruction." Both he and Hamilton assumed throughout the Federalist Papers that the Constitution was written in plain English that normal educated persons could understand, and that the job of the courts ("beyond comparison the weakest" of the three branches of government, wrote Hamilton in no. 78) would be simply to interpret it – not to help it "evolve" to fit a people with evolving ideas (that was the job of the people through the amendment process, not the courts). They also insisted, again and again, that the proposed federal government had limited, defined powers – and actually reading that list in Article I, Section 8 explains how Hamilton could argue with a straight face (in no. 84) that the proposed Constitution would save the people of the United States money, by giving them a cheaper government, considering the state and federal levels together, than they had under the Articles of Confederation.
That shows up the problem with the big strategy of the majority of social conservatives, who expect a conservative president to appoint judges who will overturn Roe v. Wade on constitutional grounds: what about the New Deal, the Great Society, the War on Drugs, and the undeclared foreign wars of the last 60 years? What about the vast body of Federal legislation that has nothing to do with the short list in Article I, Section 8? What about the Patriot Act? None of these are any more constitutional in terms of the clear original intent of the text and those who ratified it than the basically unlimited abortion right proclaimed in Roe v. Wade and subsequent decisions. (The moderator’s question would have been unthinkable to social conservatives in 1788: no one dreamed the federal government would ever get involved in such issues, or would dare to do so without amending the Constitution.) Social conservatives who want to eat their cake and have it too, who think they can get Roe v. Wade overturned on constitutional grounds, but leave the rest of these programs and activities untouched, are either ignorant of the text and original understanding of the Constitution, or deluding themselves, or indulging in rank hypocrisy. If they are intelligent and know any history, it looks like the latter.
The rest of the conservative candidates, and almost all conservative leaders, seem stuck with that "hypocrite" label regarding the Constitution. In that document’s name, they thunder against programs they don’t like, without revealing that they have no intention of dismantling the unconstitutional programs (or stop getting into unconstitutional undeclared wars) that they do like. They appear eager and willing to share the "constitutional hypocrite" label with their supporters. Paul, however, offers an escape from hypocrisy: a consistent originalist approach to the Constitution (as amended, of course). On those grounds, he would begin to put an end to the entire federal welfare and entitlement apparatus, all of which are outside the arena of the powers of Congress as listed in Article I, Section 8. Paul has stated that such programs must be brought to an end completely, but in a gradual way, so as to minimize harm those who have built their lives around them.
Note that this is a far more specific, and sweeping, promise to cut government than Ronald Reagan ever made, and that Paul has the credentials, beyond any other conservative politician, to prove his sincerity on this issue. For decades, he has not voted in favor of programs he believes are unconstitutional (his yes votes are rare indeed). He wants the states and churches and other voluntary organizations to take up the slack, gradually, as the federal government lets go, in anti-poverty efforts – using the money that would be left in their pockets due to a Federalist Papers-sized federal government. He wants individuals to save for their own retirement, and look after their own families. That ought to warm the hearts of social conservatives, and set those of small government conservatives on fire. No other conservative politician is anywhere near this constitutional consistency and credibility on the issue of a smaller federal government. And by the way, on abortion, Paul is on the record calling for Congress to exercise its power, granted in Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution, to exclude the Supreme Court from appellate jurisdiction on the issue, moving it right back to where it was in January 1973, with the states.
Why would anyone on the left, or middle-of-the-road independents, vote for such a program? For two possible reasons: first, the other half of this constitutional consistency concerns the power to declare war, which the Constitution gives to Congress, not the President. As Tom Woods points out, George Washington and many subsequent American presidents understood that they could order the armed forces to defend themselves or America’s territory, but anything beyond that required them to go to Congress for a declaration of war – that they had no power to start wars, only to lead them after Congress started them. This is, in fact, the only serious originalist approach to the text of the Constitution. Whenever Democrats or Republicans have promised to end the wars in recent years, they have forgotten the pledge when they got the power. Left-wing or independent Americans who are tired of seeing their armed forces involved in endless, undeclared wars, and tired of seeing that no vote seems to change that, might just jump at the chance to vote for someone who really would bring the troops home, even if it meant they would have to shift efforts to have government take care of poverty, or to sculpt society as they wish, to the state level. One left-of-center
American who has made that choice is Robin Koerner, who recently called for Democrats who care about "peace and civil liberty" to become "Blue Republicans" for a year and vote for Ron Paul.
Second, more and more Americans, including many independents, appear to be realizing that the government’s official commitments are far beyond its ability to pay in today’s dollars (battered as those are compared to those of even, say, ten years ago). Many of these same Americans realize that the government has a tempting "stealth" escape: gradual further debasement of our money will enable the government to pay its commitments, in money with the same numbers and presidents’ faces, but with vastly reduced value. Creating digital dollars in the trillions with nothing to back them is guaranteed in and of itself to make everything in the world more expensive in dollar terms, but the government can blame oil producers or other wicked foreigners, or greedy corporations, for what it is doing itself. Given the size of entitlements (along with the Pentagon budget), the government’s clear inability to pay them, the Federal Reserve’s full control over ex nihilo currency creation, and the average American’s lack of economic sophistication, who can believe the government is likely (or will want) to resist this sneaky escape from insolvency? Independent voters who see these facts may decide that getting the federal government out from under its crushing obligations honestly is the only approach with a hope of avoiding economic catastrophe.
That leaves one horsefly in the milk jug, from the social conservative point of view: their enthusiasm for military action abroad clashes with Paul’s "non-interventionism" pretty badly. Perhaps Paul’s approach is impossible for them to swallow. There are several arguments in favor of change that social conservatives might heed, however. First, non-intervention is the original foreign policy of the United States. This is the clear message of Washington’s farewell address. It was restated in glowing words by our fifth president, John Quincy Adams: "wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been unfurled, there will [America’s] heart, her benedictions, and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own." Adams continued that an America that used force to change the world for the better would gradually lose her own virtues, gaining instead "an imperial diadem, flashing in false and tarnished luster the murky radiance of dominion and power." Adams, repeating the wisdom of his parents’ generation, the Founders, believed in American "exceptionalism" all right, but not in American power to impose its ways on the world. Like the Founders, he also didn’t believe exceptionalism was guaranteed to last, and impervious to our actions. Even Dwight Eisenhower, hardly a lily-livered liberal, warned Americans of the dangers of an uncontrolled military-industrial complex. This is a current in American thought that was the mainstream for centuries, and perhaps some social conservatives can bring themselves to see it as such. Next, they might even read fellow social conservatives such as Andrew Bacevich for a different perspective on what our military forces are doing and achieving beyond our shores. According to CIA expert Michael Scheuer, the former head of the bin Ladin unit (and no pacifist!), it is not true that "we're hated because of our freedoms…in fact we're hated because of our actions in the Islamic world." Attacks on a non-interventionist U.S. would likely shrink to the level of attacks on, say, Switzerland. (If they hate us for our freedom, why aren’t they attacking the Swiss?)
Social conservatives might also consider my own exhaustive, non-partisan argument in Iraq: the Moral Reckoning that launching the U.S. war in Iraq was unjust according to just war theory. A variety of well-known religious conservatives, including Chuck Colson, Richard Land, George Weigel, Robert George, and Fr. Richard John Neuhaus (RIP), all made brief defenses of the justice of that war before it was launched in 2003. However, there has been little or no serious acknowledgement of the other side of the argument, at least by pro-war religious conservatives. It is true that many of the opponents of the war were "liberals" or even radicals in American terms – but arguments deserve to be heard, no matter where they come from. In the scholastic tradition of the high Middle Ages, no important thesis was considered safely proven until it had been "chewed in the jaws" of a rational disputation. Thomas Aquinas found the best objections available to his own ideas, published them with his ideas, and answered them. Surely the best traditions of social conservatives include a careful look at opposing arguments, and an attempt to answer them. So far, my arguments, far more extensive than any arguing that the Iraq war was just, have not been addressed by those who disagree with me. Some social conservative ought to do it – he or she might even find that my arguments change minds.
But finally, perhaps social conservatives will consider today’s situation in the light of the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Under the Articles of Confederation, taxes were not collected, the bills were not getting paid, and the loose coalition of basically independent states was not getting a lot of respect in the wider world. For a long list of rather ordinary kinds of decisions, the votes of nine out of thirteen states were necessary, and no amendment of the Articles was possible without the states’ unanimous consent. The larger states, like New York and Virginia, were fed up with their inability to over-ride smaller states’ insistence on the status quo in everything that worked in their favor, and wanted a legislature that reflected the population of the states. Smaller states, on the other hand, saw no reason to give up the "one state-one vote" situation. Rhode Island, which was infamous for this approach, had even boycotted the Convention for fear it had nothing to gain from any change. Deadlock seemed cemented into place. When the Convention had come to a standstill, the Great Compromise of 1787 was suggested by the Connecticut delegation: the lower house of the new congress, with certain powers, would provide delegates to each state based on its population, but the upper house, with a different set of powers, would provide equal representation for each state. When the situation seemed impossible, everyone gave something up, and a compromise provided a way forward.
Ron Paul offers the country a unique compromise, a return to constitutional government. The situation is perhaps even more deadlocked than that of 1787. From the perspective of the Founders’ design, our federal government is a flagrantly unconstitutional, bankrupt Leviathan, controlling huge swathes of our lives, trying to control much of the world as well, and spending our great great grandchildren’s notional money to do it. Social conservatives are not changing American minds in large numbers on domestic issues. On foreign policy, their affection for maintaining and expanding military action abroad seems like a major electoral handicap in light of the sweeping election victory of Barack Obama, the only major candidate who had openly opposed the Iraq war. For 2012, one more conservative candidate who offers Americans even more government control over their lives, with more toughness abroad and more national coercion on moral issues, is unlikely even to win the Republican nomination (consider the "moderate" Bushes and McCain). Such a candidate will be a hypocrite on the Constitution – surely an important consideration. If he or she somehow wins the nomination, and somehow wins the general election as well, Americans are almost sure to divide their votes so as to frustrate him or her with a Democratic congress. There are millions of non-theist (or theist but pragmatic) Americans who strongly disagree with social conservatives on what ought to be illegal. Thus, in the best business-as-usual scenario social conservatives are likely to get, the nation would also keep its "imperial diadem," with its "murky radiance of dominion and power," if John Quincy Adams is to be believed. At home, the moral issues stalemate would continue, and the debt burden would go on growing.
Given this choice, might social conservatives consider Ron Paul’s Great Compromise of 2012, a return to constitutional government? Consider again the details: a massive tax cut for all, the end of the death of the dollar by a trillion cuts, and a return of real saving by ordinary Americans. A gradual transfer of almost all the assumed, unconstitutional powers and burdens of the federal government back to the states and the people. A truly defensive "Defense Department." (Under Paul, it might even get back its old, honest name of the War Department.) Liberals would have to give up social engineering on the national level. Due to democracy itself, liberals could work in each state to make it whatever kind of left-leaning welfare state they liked, but social conservatives could go on fighting them on the state level, and could also work in conservative states for whatever laws they liked. New York and California might end up with gay marriage and easy abortion – not much of a change there. Texas or South Carolina, though, might ban them both – a big change. Radicals on the left and right would suffer an end to American attempts to reshape the world – but realists would at least get an American government that would not go broke. Might social conservatives decide it sounds like 1787?
If they don’t, it appears likely Paul will do better than last time around, perhaps far better, but still fall short of the Republican nomination or the presidency. In that case, the political status quo will almost surely continue, with either a Republican or a Democratic nominal head. We will continue to live under what Bacevich calls Washington Rules, a phrase that could describe our domestic as well as foreign policies. Social conservatives will get full-throated pledges of allegiance from Republican candidates, "Tea Party" and otherwise, but, based on decades of evidence…not much else. And perhaps we will stumble down Status Quo Road for another decade or two, the dollar’s decline will gradually halt, and tens of trillions of dollars of misbegotten debt will gradually work themselves out of our system (as in Japan?). Perhaps we will "grow our way out" of our problems, perhaps with tax cuts! If so, we will all forget about that foolish false prophet Ron Paul. But if investors like Jim Rogers, Marc Faber, and Peter Schiff, who predicted the current credit crisis, are right, we will either shrink the welfare/warfare state, or it and its mountain of debts will shrink our economy, soon.
Social conservatives who have hitched your wagon to political conservatism in America: You can’t get everything you might like, you really can’t. You are not a majority in today’s America. If you insist on going for victory, like Wellington at Waterloo, you will instead get the status quo one more time: the independents, the leftists, and the middle-of-the-roaders will throw their weight against you, and all together they outnumber you by a mile. Standard political conservative candidates, if they win, will throw war and some rhetoric in your direction, but not domestic substance. But four more years of the status quo might prove the final straw. Is it time for a new Great Compromise?
Tuesday
WHEN A CUT IS NOT A CUT
One might think that the recent drama over the debt ceiling involves one side wanting to increase or maintain spending with the other side wanting to drastically cut spending, but that is far from the truth. In spite of the rhetoric being thrown around, the real debate is over how much government spending will increase.
No plan under serious consideration cuts spending in the way you and I think about it. Instead, the "cuts" being discussed are illusory, and are not cuts from current amounts being spent, but cuts in projected spending increases. This is akin to a family "saving" $100,000 in expenses by deciding not to buy a Lamborghini, and instead getting a fully loaded Mercedes, when really their budget dictates that they need to stick with their perfectly serviceable Honda. But this is the type of math Washington uses to mask the incriminating truth about their unrepentant plundering of the American people.
The truth is that frightening rhetoric about default and full faith and credit of the United States is being carelessly thrown around to ram through a bigger budget than ever, in spite of stagnant revenues. If your family's income did not change year over year, would it be wise financial management to accelerate spending so you would feel richer? That is what our government is doing, with one side merely suggesting a different list of purchases than the other.
In reality, bringing our fiscal house into order is not that complicated or excruciatingly painful at all. If we simply kept spending at current levels, by their definition of "cuts" that would save nearly $400 billion in the next few years, versus the $25 billion the Budget Control Act claims to "cut". It would only take us 5 years to "cut" $1 trillion, in Washington math, just by holding the line on spending. That is hardly austere or catastrophic.
A balanced budget is similarly simple and within reach if Washington had just a tiny amount of fiscal common sense. Our revenues currently stand at approximately $2.2 trillion a year and are likely to remain stagnant as the recession continues. Our outlays are $3.7 trillion and projected to grow every year. Yet we only have to go back to 2004 for federal outlays of $2.2 trillion, and the government was far from small that year. If we simply returned to that year's spending levels, which would hardly be austere, we would have a balanced budget right now. If we held the line on spending, and the economy actually did grow as estimated, the budget would balance on its own by 2015 with no cuts whatsoever.
We pay 35 percent more for our military today than we did 10 years ago, for the exact same capabilities. The same could be said for the rest of the government. Why has our budget doubled in 10 years? This country doesn't have double the population, or double the land area, or double anything that would require the federal government to grow by such an obscene amount.
In Washington terms, a simple freeze in spending would be a much bigger "cut" than any plan being discussed. If politicians simply cannot bear to implement actual cuts to actual spending, just freezing the budget would give the economy the best chance to catch its breath, recover and grow.
No plan under serious consideration cuts spending in the way you and I think about it. Instead, the "cuts" being discussed are illusory, and are not cuts from current amounts being spent, but cuts in projected spending increases. This is akin to a family "saving" $100,000 in expenses by deciding not to buy a Lamborghini, and instead getting a fully loaded Mercedes, when really their budget dictates that they need to stick with their perfectly serviceable Honda. But this is the type of math Washington uses to mask the incriminating truth about their unrepentant plundering of the American people.
The truth is that frightening rhetoric about default and full faith and credit of the United States is being carelessly thrown around to ram through a bigger budget than ever, in spite of stagnant revenues. If your family's income did not change year over year, would it be wise financial management to accelerate spending so you would feel richer? That is what our government is doing, with one side merely suggesting a different list of purchases than the other.
In reality, bringing our fiscal house into order is not that complicated or excruciatingly painful at all. If we simply kept spending at current levels, by their definition of "cuts" that would save nearly $400 billion in the next few years, versus the $25 billion the Budget Control Act claims to "cut". It would only take us 5 years to "cut" $1 trillion, in Washington math, just by holding the line on spending. That is hardly austere or catastrophic.
A balanced budget is similarly simple and within reach if Washington had just a tiny amount of fiscal common sense. Our revenues currently stand at approximately $2.2 trillion a year and are likely to remain stagnant as the recession continues. Our outlays are $3.7 trillion and projected to grow every year. Yet we only have to go back to 2004 for federal outlays of $2.2 trillion, and the government was far from small that year. If we simply returned to that year's spending levels, which would hardly be austere, we would have a balanced budget right now. If we held the line on spending, and the economy actually did grow as estimated, the budget would balance on its own by 2015 with no cuts whatsoever.
We pay 35 percent more for our military today than we did 10 years ago, for the exact same capabilities. The same could be said for the rest of the government. Why has our budget doubled in 10 years? This country doesn't have double the population, or double the land area, or double anything that would require the federal government to grow by such an obscene amount.
In Washington terms, a simple freeze in spending would be a much bigger "cut" than any plan being discussed. If politicians simply cannot bear to implement actual cuts to actual spending, just freezing the budget would give the economy the best chance to catch its breath, recover and grow.
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