Was almost tempted to go Obama in 2008, but after reading some of this Ron Paul "spam", i have to say a lot of it makes sense.
Smaller federal government and increasing states rights/autonomy? Hell yes.
We don't need a massive government telling us what to do, or to protect us from ourselves. This country was founded on the basis of individual liberty. Whether or not that results in a country capable of global hegemony and ensuring a high standard of living should be beside the point. This country began as a rebellion from federal regulation - and so it should have remained. Instead, every year since 1787 we do nothing but pass more laws on the local, state, and federal level. Is that level of regulation truly necessary? In 2007, in the first session of the 110th congress, nearly 7,000 new bills were proposed and more than 1,000 actually passed. Now remember, those are just bills - each bill can be comprised of dozens of new laws and regulations. But that's just the start... there are also agencies like the EPA and FCC which have de-facto federal law-making power with their ability to implement a wide range of fines and sanctions independent of the rest of the federal government. And I'm not even going to try to enumerate all the new state and local laws that get passed every year... you get the point.
Call me a looney, but i think the USA would do quite well without this huge cadre of full-time politicians doing nothing but advocating "change" and trying to one-up themselves with new, catchy sounding laws.
We have troops in 130 countries... why?
How does having US troops spread across the world keep us - as individuals - safe? After all, isn't safety the only justifiable reason we have for our military hegemony? Yet wouldn't it stand to reason that having a military just a quarter its current size - but based in the US - could defend US citizens better than our current military, with resources spread across the globe? Wouldn't it stand to reason that disentangling ourselves from the foreign policy of these nations would reduce the anger that their citizens feel towards us for intervening in their affairs? Isn't it more efficient to make us safe by being non-confrontational, versus being confrontational with a big military? Why, then, does our government strive for this hegemony? If not for safety, then what?
For wealth.
And that, if not unconstitutional, is unethical. We build military bases in the middle of resource-rich dictatorships in the name of what? Liberty? Obviously not - we do it for cheap commodity prices. We don't care about spreading democracy, we care about keeping our citizens standard of living among the highest in the world. While that's certainly great for our citizens, don't delude yourself into thinking it's helping the rest of the world. Everyone in the world can't be rich - and it's the rest of the world that currently suffers for our wealth. If we had achieved that level of economic supremacy purely through capitalistic endeavors, that would be one thing... we would be a model truly worth emulating. But to achieve world hegemony through bribery, coercion, and military might is not an ideal worth spreading, is it? Imagine if the tables were turned.
Now, i admit that some of Ron Paul's views are 'out there'...
...but even if he were elected president, it's not as if he has the power to single-handedly revert us to the gold standard and eliminate the IRS. He doesn't become some sort of libertarian dictator. He would still have to negotiate with congress. The idea isn't to transform society overnight, but to begin the process of a return to this countries constitutional roots. It was never written in the constitution that we should strive to become an economic, political, and military juggernaut to force what's best for us on the rest of the world. It was written that individual liberties should be respected above all... and that this country shouldn't be allowed to sacrifice those liberties in the name of security (the patriot act) or wealth (NAFTA, WTO, national debt).
We created something unique in 1787, but slowly that uniqueness has been eroded away. Each year more laws are passed, more layers of bureaucracy are added, and the citizen becomes further and further disconnected from the original liberties the founders valued so highly. Am i the only one who finds it amusing that every candidate clamors for the "change" banner, yet in reality their policy differences are nearly intangible? I mean really, how has an argument about whether or not we should pull troops out of one country become the most divisive issue of the election when we've still got troops in 130 other countries?
Smaller federal government and increasing states rights/autonomy? Hell yes.
We don't need a massive government telling us what to do, or to protect us from ourselves. This country was founded on the basis of individual liberty. Whether or not that results in a country capable of global hegemony and ensuring a high standard of living should be beside the point. This country began as a rebellion from federal regulation - and so it should have remained. Instead, every year since 1787 we do nothing but pass more laws on the local, state, and federal level. Is that level of regulation truly necessary? In 2007, in the first session of the 110th congress, nearly 7,000 new bills were proposed and more than 1,000 actually passed. Now remember, those are just bills - each bill can be comprised of dozens of new laws and regulations. But that's just the start... there are also agencies like the EPA and FCC which have de-facto federal law-making power with their ability to implement a wide range of fines and sanctions independent of the rest of the federal government. And I'm not even going to try to enumerate all the new state and local laws that get passed every year... you get the point.
Call me a looney, but i think the USA would do quite well without this huge cadre of full-time politicians doing nothing but advocating "change" and trying to one-up themselves with new, catchy sounding laws.
We have troops in 130 countries... why?
How does having US troops spread across the world keep us - as individuals - safe? After all, isn't safety the only justifiable reason we have for our military hegemony? Yet wouldn't it stand to reason that having a military just a quarter its current size - but based in the US - could defend US citizens better than our current military, with resources spread across the globe? Wouldn't it stand to reason that disentangling ourselves from the foreign policy of these nations would reduce the anger that their citizens feel towards us for intervening in their affairs? Isn't it more efficient to make us safe by being non-confrontational, versus being confrontational with a big military? Why, then, does our government strive for this hegemony? If not for safety, then what?
For wealth.
And that, if not unconstitutional, is unethical. We build military bases in the middle of resource-rich dictatorships in the name of what? Liberty? Obviously not - we do it for cheap commodity prices. We don't care about spreading democracy, we care about keeping our citizens standard of living among the highest in the world. While that's certainly great for our citizens, don't delude yourself into thinking it's helping the rest of the world. Everyone in the world can't be rich - and it's the rest of the world that currently suffers for our wealth. If we had achieved that level of economic supremacy purely through capitalistic endeavors, that would be one thing... we would be a model truly worth emulating. But to achieve world hegemony through bribery, coercion, and military might is not an ideal worth spreading, is it? Imagine if the tables were turned.
Now, i admit that some of Ron Paul's views are 'out there'...
...but even if he were elected president, it's not as if he has the power to single-handedly revert us to the gold standard and eliminate the IRS. He doesn't become some sort of libertarian dictator. He would still have to negotiate with congress. The idea isn't to transform society overnight, but to begin the process of a return to this countries constitutional roots. It was never written in the constitution that we should strive to become an economic, political, and military juggernaut to force what's best for us on the rest of the world. It was written that individual liberties should be respected above all... and that this country shouldn't be allowed to sacrifice those liberties in the name of security (the patriot act) or wealth (NAFTA, WTO, national debt).
We created something unique in 1787, but slowly that uniqueness has been eroded away. Each year more laws are passed, more layers of bureaucracy are added, and the citizen becomes further and further disconnected from the original liberties the founders valued so highly. Am i the only one who finds it amusing that every candidate clamors for the "change" banner, yet in reality their policy differences are nearly intangible? I mean really, how has an argument about whether or not we should pull troops out of one country become the most divisive issue of the election when we've still got troops in 130 other countries?
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