Topic: Ron Paul
Ron Paul and the Past Century Ron Paul talks a lot about ideas like liberty, sound money, and having a non-interventionalist foreign policy. If you dig a bit deeper, you come to realize that a lot of the things he talks about would require back tracking over the past 100 years and restoring some rather old ideas.by Chris Johns
(Libertarian)
Monday, April 7, 2008
When people talk about going back to laws and customs that worked 100 years ago, a time when almost all of us (in the world) hadn't been born yet, few can begin to imagine what things would be like. It can be quite scary to consider it. Some progress has been made over the last century. Why would we want to go back?
100 years ago, you would find no television, telephones were still relatively new, and nobody had even heard of a spy satellite. 100 years before the date of this writing would find a United States of America with only 45 states in it. In fact, 100 years approaches half of the entire lifespan of the United States. In short, 100 years is a long time.
A century ago, there were only 15 amendments to the United States Constitution, and 10 of those had been done all at once. Since the Bill of Rights, men of every race and color had gained the right to vote, but women would have to wait another 13 years for suffrage. Apart from the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, great strides for liberty and civil rights have been made in America over the last century, right? Well, at the constitutional level, not really.
In the last century, we've fiddled with things like Presidential and Congressional terms and succession. We've granted electors to the District of Columbia, and we've addressed Congressional pay raises. We've established a direct election for senators, and we've prohibited the payment of taxes as a prerequisite to voting eligibility. The latter is particularly helpful, although I'm told that being in prison can make it difficult to cast a vote. Regardless, I'm glad that we did some of these things, and some good has come from them, but we also have made some silly choices.
We prohibited the manufacture and sale of alcohol. We later decided that the prohibition of alcohol was a silly idea, so we re-un-prohibited it. It's a good thing, too. If prohibition of any sort has a useful purpose, it is to increase the value of something. Once something that people want is prohibited, the value of the prohibited item increases. It does not, however, do what its name suggests. Contrary to its intended purpose, the act of prohibiting something encourages the creation of an underground market where, regardless of the law, the prohibited item will still be traded, and it runs the risk of legally transforming otherwise law abiding, productive people into criminals.
We also passed an amendment that apparently gave the U.S. government the right to tax every dollar we earn. This led to the establishment of great American Institutions like the Federal Reserve and the I.R.S. We even established a date to celebrate these achievements which approaches as I write: April 15th a.k.a. Tax Day! (applause)
Although some will say we couldn't get along without the 16th amendment, I am not convinced. If it was a necessary evil, then let us finally be done with it. It has increased our ability to devalue our currency, and it punishes productivity while providing a means to fund doomed social programs and a much abused welfare system. If you're a proponent of the income tax, then you're set. Your work is done, and your holiday approaches. If you'd like to keep the money you earn so that you can decide what to spend it on, you might want to look into another constitutional amendment. You will want to get started soon, though. I hear some amendments can take over 100 years to ratify.
A century ago, some of these things didn't exist... just like television. If the best progress we have made over the last hundred years could be preserved while restoring the best of the principles on which we were founded, wouldn't that be worth going back? This is what Ron Paul has been talking about, and regardless of who the next president will be, it is worth considering.
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2008 Chris Johns, all rights reserved.
Published: Monday, April 7, 2008
Last modified: Monday, April 7, 2008
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"We've established a direct election for senators, ... Regardless, I'm glad that we did some of these things, and some good has come from them"
What good came from the 17th Amendment? What good came from removing the States' vertical check on the federal government in the Senate? The unfunded mandates? The trampling of the Tenth Amendment? Hardly!
The point was that the amendments we've adopted over the last 100 years do not rise to the level of the ones that preceded them. While some of them have had a positive effect, obviously all of them haven't. My articles almost always end up about half the size of what they start out with. I didn't want to pick everything apart. I merely wanted to illustrate the difference in quality of the amendments over the last century and the idea that we can go back and fix mistakes that we've made. You make a good point, and maybe I'll address that in a future article.
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2008 Chris Johns, all rights reserved.