Why I support his campaign. by Van Bryant, II
(libertarian)
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Were it a viable choice, my vote in 2012 would be cast for "none of the above."
Presently, that will not be a listed option on the ballot, neither is there a cohesive write-in movement for such. Not voting has even less of an impact: there will be a President, and there will be butts sitting in the Capitol Building, whether 99 or 1% of the electorate casts their vote.
Until this changes (and believe me, it needs to), I support Ron Paul and the libertarian movement. While I do not agree with all of their planks, at least the Paul campaign offers a true alternative for dealing with economic and societal realities. The other Republican and Democratic candidates are different prongs on Morton's Fork.
Simply put: the upcoming election amounts to two selections: more statism or less. Only Ron Paul offers the latter. I challenge my readers to look beyond the conservative and liberal catechisms, and consider the underlying application of statism itself. Has government-supported central banking stabilized the economy? Have bailouts and quantitative easing saved us from hardships? Have government grants and other involvements made industry more profitable and innovative? Have military interventions and foreign aid stabilized the world? Do you feel safer under the Patriot Act and other domestic security measures? Have domestic welfare programs made Americans more responsible with their money and more caring for their fellow man? Have labor laws made employment plentiful and workers more productive? Only Ron Paul has answered "no" to all of the questions above.
The statists on the right and left would rather you focus on what the government's powers of coercion are used for, and not the fact that such power has no place in civilized and modern society in the first place. Cloaked in saccharine appeals to "common sense," the statist in reality panders to the tyrant and the revanchist. All statist notions are predicated upon the belief that man would degenerate into savagery and wanton destruction without the oversight of others. Anyone who has spent ten minutes in a room alone can easily debunk that myth, yet the past century has been one of continuous state growth. The results speak for themselves.
The attacks on Ron Paul's campaign also smack of statism. The comparisons to Neville Chamberlain? What brought about Hitler's rise in the first place? The accusations of racism? That is a banal appeal to collectivist groupthink. Illegal aliens? Fences to keep people out inevitably lead to fences to keep people in. Drug laws? Hasn't, doesn't, will not work. Homosexual laws? In effect supports a second-class citizenry. Ask one hundred people what they think about these issues, and you will find more than one answer. The state, in the name of "fairness," takes one opinion (the majority votes cast at that particular moment) and snaps it to an absolute. How can human beings ever peacefully coexist in an environment that creates groups of "absolute haves" and "absolute have-nots?"
I am an anarchist who supports Ron Paul. I support the candidate's message of less state involvement in our lives, though I would much rather prefer the complete absence of state. I applaud the campaign, admire the efforts of his supporters, and will cast my vote for Dr. Paul in 2012: either as a Republican, an Independent, or write-in. Whether or not the doctor wins the presidency, I am optimistic that a growing number of people will become aware of the real, fundamental problem plaguing the country. End the fed, end the bailouts, end the welfare, end the warfare, end the divisiveness, end the lies, end the empire, end the state. Until government is removed from human interaction, we are totem-worshipping barbarians aping civility.
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do not represent the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates.
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