Topic: Ron Paul
How to Deceptively Sneak Ron Paul Into the White House - Not How can Ron Paul Republicans deceive all other Republicans and sneak Ron Paul into the White House, literally through the back door?by Alex Wallenwein
(Conservative)
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
How can Ron Paul Republicans deceive all other Republicans and sneak Ron Paul into the White House, literally through the "back door"?
Answer: They can't.
Period!
There is no way, and we don't even want to try it - but now that I have the "Non-Paul" Republicans' attention, let's talk for a moment of what your concept of "smaller government" is.
All conservative Republicans want a smaller government, of course. That is the main glue that unites us all, regardless of whom we currently support for the GOP nomination.
But what does that phrase mean to you?
(This is intended as a dialogue between "Ron Paul Republicans" and those who do not support Ron's vision of a constitutionally limited government, for whatever reason. Because of that, when I use the word "you" in this essay, it means Non-Paul Republicans, the words "we" or "us" mean Ron Paul Republicans, and the term "us all" or "all of us" means simply Republicans.)
Please understand that this is not an initiation of a dialogue between "us" and those in the top echelons of Republican Party leadership. In my personal view, the leaders are irredeemably corrupt. My evidence for that lies in the fact that the party almost without fail lands the conservative base in a situation it does not support, under various excuses. This dialogue is between Ron Paulers and the rank and file, conservative members of the party.
What Really Divides Us All?
What do Ron-Paulers stand for that NonPaulers are opposed to so vehemently?
It seems that it all boils down to our respective views on foreign policy but ultimately, even that is just a red herring.
Ron-Paulers feel insecure about being sucked ever deeper into a quasi-imperialistic policy of weaving an ever-tighter web of foreign entanglements the precise thing such notable conservatives as George Washington warned us of. Non-Paulers, on the other hand, feel insecure about losing what they consider their "early warning system" and the supposed "early response capability" that results from the advance-placement of US troops on foreign soil, near potential geopolitical flashpoints.
It therefore seems that for as long as you have a quasi-empire to maintain abroad, smaller government is a nice ideal - but remains an illusion, an effective impossibility. Those two goals are incompatible with one another. Empires cost money. Lots of money, and that money has to come from one or both of only two possible sources: taxes and borrowing.
To get the money from taxes, government has to tax the people at high rates. Whatever it can't get from taxes, it has to borrow from foreigners, citizens, or the Federal Reserve. Both avenues of financing the empire result in bigger and bigger government. The only difference between current Democrats and current Republicans is where they want to spend most of the money thus obtained. Both want the empire, but liberals want to spend more eon social services, while conservatives want to spend more on defense. In the end, both parties want to spend more and more, all the time.
That shows there really is no middle ground at all. Smaller government is only possible without the empire - so the question becomes this: when faced with the choice between empire and smaller government, with no real middle ground at all, which side do you personally come down on?
Party leaders know that, as long as there is any perceived need of compromise on these choices, they can always steer the party faithful ever so gently (and sometimes not so gently) toward a position skewed toward supporting the empire.
Ron Paul, with his thirty-some years of a first-row view of congressional party politics, perceived this tendency and (in my personal view) wisely chose not to engage in that illusory tug of war at all. That is what freed him up ideologically to completely and utterly come down on the side of smaller, constitutionally limited government.
The Two Pillars of Extra-Constitutional Government
You see, the entire reason why we as a nation drifted so far from the vision of our founders is that those who want unlimited power have always known this very simple fact:
If you want "permission" from the electorate for making one end-run around the Constitution after another, simply convince them that there are "overriding concerns" that do not allow the country to completely follow the vision of the founders."
It is the politics of the "overriding concern" that has helped both major parties assume virtually complete control over us and allowed them to exert that control while acting completely outside the strict and quite well-defined limits of the Constitution.
That's one pillar. The other pillar of extra-constitutional power is the illusory opponent - the "other" party.
Conservatives go foaming at the mouth when their opinion leaders tell them of the "atrocities" of the liberal left (like a Jesus-in-urine art exhibit, assaults on the sanctity of life, hobnobbing with terrorist leaders and sponsors, etc.). Liberal leftists, on the other hand, go insane whenever their own leaders point to typical "atrocities" of the right, like spending more money on war than on education, tax cuts, and any intimation that religion has a legitimate place in public life.
The hilarious thing is that both sides' leaders make their followers believe that they themselves are the "champions of the Constitution" while accusing the other side of trying to undermine it while both undermine it to the utmost degree they think they can get away with.
Ron Paul has recognized this gambit for what it is and has publicly taken to position that we not only don't need to compromise in following the Constitution, but that it is ultimately and utterly destructive of the very foundation of American life if we continue to do so.
In the end, the ideological "battle" between Ron-Paulers and Non-Paulers is centered on whether or not there are any "overriding concerns" that necessitate (or excuse) our federal servants' persistent desire to step outside clear legal constraints on their exercise of power in order to achieve what they call the "greater good."
Funny, that it always turns out to be the greater evil, isn't it?
It is a tragic testimonial to our own failings as Americans that we routinely allow them to quite literally get away with murder - and that is true for followers of either political party.
The Politics of Fear
The most current "overriding concern" used by neo-conservative opinion makers and party leaders is fear itself: Terrorism. The Muslim threat, the Iranian nuke, and above all, Democrat (and anybody else's) efforts to undermine the "war on terror" that is billed as the only thing that will keep Americans safe and that will help us preserve our American way of life.
Unfortunately, those threats are then used as the stated excuse (i.e., overriding concern) for the power leaders' schemes for undermining that very same American way of life. They do this by abolishing habeas corpus, allowing secret searches of our private property, spying by the government into every single activity performed by private and supposedly "free" individuals, the arrest and unlimited detention of Americans for alleged "terrorist" activities based on secret evidence, a complete takeover by the Federal Reserve of the country's entire financial system, etc., etc.
Surely, these are all weighty concerns and would serve as the perfect excuse in anybody's mind for giving up just a little bit of freedom in order to obtain some security from these tremendous threats. But, please ask yourself this question: are we really any safer for allowing our government to step outside its legal bounds over and over again?
Does not that very same government become the greater threat when it is thus allowed to take over our lives?
You may call this last concern "paranoid" because, after all, it is "our" government, and surely it would never do anything to hurt Americans and on top of that, it is at least a nominally conservative government..
Now, ask yourself whether there is reason to worry when Hillary or Obama get to wield those very same powers over you.
You see, the rank and file Democrats currently only hate these powers because they are in the hands of the Bush administration. When "their own" candidate" takes over, whoever it may turn out to be, their alarm levels will drop as low as Republican alarm levels are right now under a Republican administration.
That's how both parties keep us, the People, from uniting to turn them out on their heads. They make us afraid one another while both party's leaders divvy up the spoils between them and the spoils are ever-increasing, extra-constitutional powers which they exercise at our expense.
Ron Paul, in my view, has correctly recognized this gambit as precisely what it is: no more than an excuse for unprecedented, ongoing, and successive power grabs. In other words: the pretext for absolute tyranny, wholly outside any legal limits imposed on the federal government by the US Constitution.
He has correctly recognized that the way to win this battle is not to find the "ideal compromise" between "some tyranny" and "some freedom", but that the only way out is to realize that Liberty itself.is the ultimate guarantor or our physical and other security.
How secure do you think you will be under a completely tyrannical rule?
Once your government has the powers the current administration claims it needs to "keep us safe" what is there that is left to keep them from utterly abusing it to our detriment?
What is there to keep the opposite side, the Democratic "enemy", from abusing these powers once a new election turns that Republican-generated power apparatus over to them?
Of course, that is one of the reasons why GOP party leaders now claim it is so imperative that we all "rally" behind John McCain, warts and all, in order to prevent the Democrats from taking over but isn't it funny that out of the whole field of eleven Republican candidates only the most liberal and anti-conservative guy makes it to the finish line?
The good thing is: he isn't there, yet.
Wrong on All the Issues
As of last year, at rock-bottom there are two main issues in this presidential election cycle: The war - and amnesty. This year, the economy was added to the mix.
Opinion polls have shown time and time again that, as of last year, seventy percent of Americans want us both out of Iraq and want no part of the administration's amnesty proposals.
McCain is on the wrong side of both of these issues! (On the economy, all three of them are wrong, in slightly differing degrees).
The Democrats are (at least pretending) to be right on one of the issues, namely the war in Iraq. So, in essence, by pushing McCain onto conservative Republicans, the GOP leadership has set the party up for ultimate failure in the November election.
There are a lot of things that can be said about McCain, but we're not going to say them here, at this time. All I will say, on the record, is that he is every conservative Republican's nightmare, in every respect other than the issue of the war in Iraq.
The question becomes, then: Is perpetuating the war in Iraq (and possibly attacking Iran) worth abandoning every other issue that is important to Republicans?
Is it worth losing the white house to the Democrats?
We have already seen that the Democrats got the edge on McCain on the war. He is no different from them on amnesty, even though he currently pretends to be - so he can assure himself the nomination. He knows that pesky Ron Paul is still there, somewhere, waiting in the wings. He knows he needs to woo the conservatives.'
All that would end if he had any chance at beating the Democrats in the fall election; the problem is, he doesn't.
Yet, the point of this dialogue is not for me to try and trash John McCain. That will have to wait for another article. Right now, we are in a dialogue about what really divides us as Republicans.
In my view and in the view of most RonPaulers, the only thin that really divides us is the party leadership that wants to keep the discussion focused on whatever their "overriding concern" is, rather than the real issue, and that issue is:
Are we a nation ruled by law, or a nation ruled by men?
If we are a nation of laws, there can and should be no "overriding concern." The Constitution is the supreme law of the land. Even the US supreme court continues to mouth that piece of wisdom while violating the letter and the spirit of it with nearly every decision it hands down.
An example for this would be McCain/Feingold, a law which the court upheld by citing the government's interest of "fighting corruption" as the overriding concern that allowed it to ignore the rather clear mandates of the First Amendment - you know, as in "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech." Pretty clear cut, isn't it?
You know you're in trouble when the supreme court itself, the ultimate purveyor of the supreme law of the land, claims that there are "concerns" that simply override the very law they are charged with upholding.
That is what ultimately divides us: the question of whether any concerns allow the federal government to step outside the legal bounds that the People who established their government via the Constitution imposed on it.
It is very similar to asking whether there are any overriding concerns that would allow you to rob a bank, even though doing so would clearly be a violation of a criminal statute. Of course, you have the power to rob the bank, but you would end up being a criminal - a law breaker..
When it comes to government officials, if you answer this question in the affirmative then you condone lawbreaking by your government.
The Constitution is the law the People gave their government to live by and operate under. If that is your position, then you will support your party leaders and the entire lawless machinery that today constitutes what we refer to as our federal government - but please, stop any pretense that you are a "conservative" who "supports the Constitution"!
If you answer this question in the negative, then you have to, by force of reason alone, withdraw your support for anyone and anything that undermines the supremacy of the Constitution as a legal check on our politicians.
Whichever side you come down on determines whether, deep down, you are really a Ron Paul Republican or continue to be a "Non-Paul Republican". It is really that simple. It is what really divides us.
If you are a NonPauler, I would like to hear your views on this. Please feel free to attack anything you just read in the Comments section below. I am looking forward to an interesting, enlightening, and mutually respectful exchange of ideas.
THIS JUST IN:
Before closing, let's reiterate the question leading in to this article, and rephrase it slightly: Here is the question:
How can Non-Paul Republicans deceive all Republicans and sneak John McCain into the White House, literally through the "back door"?
I would like to hear if anyone has a reasoned defense for the actions of malfeasance of the County Convention Chairman of the Nueces County, Texas GOP, as demonstrated by the audio just linked to.
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2008 Alex Wallenwein, all rights reserved.
Published: Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Last modified: Tuesday, April 22, 2008
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I predicted that headline would appear. You have basically said in better words what I was trying to get accross. If a candidate can't win in his own distric or state, then he has no business in the White House. Ask Al Gore how he lost his own state.
The 5th paragraph under What Really Divides us All should read: Both want the empire, but liberals want to spend more eon social services, while conservatives you want to spend more on defenseillegal wars.
A true Ron Paul Republican is in full support of the charter that has set up this Republic of the United States of America. Unfortunately our charter, the Constitution, has been used as a welcome mat for the neo-conservatives, like Bush, to represent their ideals for getting elected, but to then do an about-face to those platforms under the guise of our safety. McCain's voting record for interventional, voting against tax cuts, flaunting and abusing the public campaign finances, ongoing support for an unconstitutional war as well as upcoming unconstitutional war with Iran, and his positions on greater governmental control all fly in the face of what the Constitution was drafted for in the first place. Ron Paul is the ONLY republican that I have seen in my lifetime that has truly stood up to what the Republicans were once about. In fact, it shocks me that anyone outside of the power grab, the normal everyday citizens, actually vow to vote for McCain because they will support what the Republican party presents to them.It makes me wonder if anyone has done his or her research on McCain. I still get perplexed daily that Ron Paul's message and candidacy, regardless of the mainstream press blackout, regardless of him being marginalized by his own party, and regardless of him being barred from debates, was not embraced fully by EVERYONE in America. I guess the honesty of getting the government out of our wallets and purses, getting the government to focus on our country and not others, getting the government off of our back as far as what we can or cannot put into our body, and getting the government out of devaluing the dollar was just too much for most to wrap their heads around. This is one of the most common sense approaches to liberty and freedom and Ron Paul should have been hailed as a hero to likes we have not seen since Thomas Jefferson.
As a Ron Paul Republican, we CANNOT stand down in the time of our country’s needs.We must do everything available within the charter to get him nominated and progress is being made.I have voted Republican for every President, aside for Perot, and will continue to do so, but I refuse to support another Bush, again.Ron Paul is our savior and I look forward to the battle that will ensue.Furthermore we should all be thanking Ron Paul for bringing the light to us, as us Bush voters were sure taken for a ride in the dark.
Some folks inherit star spangled eyes, Ooh, they send you down to war, lord, And when you ask them, how much should we give? Ooh, they only answer more! more! more! yoh,
It aint me, it aint me, I aint no military son, son. It aint me, it aint me; I aint no fortunate one, one.
LLOYD KEMPSON : Once again the smary NeoCon TROLL makes his mark (like my dog Ebony) in the corner. You are such a loser -boy, not a real man at all! Get a life, buster, and work at ousting our corrupted representatives at all and any level. Your whiny anti-Paul rhetoric is so transparent and pathetic. YOU are why we press on. Viva la R3VOLution!
Tim G. said, "I guess the honesty of getting the government out of our wallets and purses, getting the government to focus on our country and not others, getting the government off of our back as far as what we can or cannot put into our body, and getting the government out of devaluing the dollar was just too much for most to wrap their heads around. This is one of the most common sense approaches to liberty and freedom and Ron Paul should have been hailed as a hero to likes we have not seen since Thomas Jefferson."
Hear, Hear,... HERO!
It is especially astonishing to hear the convention chairman remark that McCain isn't his first choice or even his second but he is the only one capable of beating the "knuckle heads" in the opposing party. Not even a mention of Ron Paul's name, as if he didn't exist.
HELLO!! What? Does it take a knuckle head to beat a knuckle head?
Not since JFK has there been a candidate worth voting for and the Republican party has him but ignores him! For CRYING OUT LOUD!
Some minds have been stuck in the brainwash cycle for so long they like it and refuse to rinse. Those bubbles will eventually pop! Better now than later.
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2008 Alex Wallenwein, all rights reserved.