Newcomer! I wasn’t reading carefully, I just realized you’re a Ron Paul supporter! I wasn’t being snarky, I was trying to point out that with your definition Ron Paul wasn’t a joke candidate, because I thought you were an extreme liberal like everyone else on this board. I volunteer for the Ron Paul campaign! Let’s be friends!
Few hours later
Just to clarify… 1st, I’m a Canadian and 2nd, I do have some views that one might consider Liberal so it’s a mixed bag (for someone in medical field, I’m quite surprised by his stance on Evolution). But, I do strongly subscribe to principles that Ron Paul champions - individual liberty, constitutional government, sound money, free markets, and noninterventionist foreign policy.
Oh, so did he give up on the gold standard, then?
That is not a principle he champions. It might be a principle in which he believes deep down inside (I personally doubt it), but he has chosen to place it in distant second (or third or fourth or ninety-sixth) to the antithetical principle of states’ rights. It’s sort of hard to champion individual liberty while also actively attempting to restore the ability of states to imprison the people who actually use it.
Could you expand on this, please? What laws/principles is he fighting for that will imprison people to the states?
My limited understanding of this sort of attack on Ron Paul position is based on the idea that somehow removing or reducing the role of Federal Government in the affairs of State means that State gets to do whatever they want. An example of “State doing whatever they want” is that the law that got rid of the Jim Crow laws had embedded property related elements. Ron is against those property related rules; i.e. private business gets to choose who to serve. So people now infer that if Ron Paul was against the Civil Rights Act he is also for segregation. I agree with Ron Paul that those two things are separate in its essence but appear as connected.
Ron suggestion that “market forces” would resolve it has some merit when we see how quickly, today, in a super connected consumer society things get corrected, almost instantly. Try today and have someone on TV to offend blacks or gays – that person is out the door before you wake up the next day.
That, in essence, is the rule of “market forces”. The only difference – when compared to Civil Rights Era - is that today it happens almost instantly as more people get to participate. Also, the period was heavily politically charged as Civil Rights issue was not the only issue and US, on its own, had to face numerous internal and external issues that dramatically affected political dynamic. To me, Civil Rights Act was an expedient measure rather than essential measure; i.e. minorities continued to suffer regardless of the date that Act was in effect.
But, then again, I’m more fan of Malcolm X than MLK.
Those aren’t property related rules. Those are conduct related rules. You can still discriminate against blacks or whoever by making your restaurant a private club (or not running a restaurant at all).
He has repeatedly introduced legislation that would ban federal courts from upholding peoples’ constitutional rights to exercise their religious freedoms and enjoy privacy in their lives (especially when it involves sex*) free from the interference of the states. (And this isn’t a theoretical thing, or something that doesn’t really matter any more in 2011. John G. Lawrence, Norma McCorvey, and the Barnett children are all alive today, and they were were all abused by their states until federal courts stepped in and protected their legal rights using the process that Ron Paul wants to take away from us.)
*I single out sex only because the bill does.
When you vigorously defend the “right” of business owners to segregate, you’re supporting segregation. It’s not as simple as “Oh, market forces will sort it all out; we don’t need laws against it”. This is not a theoretical exercise; this is simple empirical fact. We really did have segregation, and market forces really didn’t sort it out. If they had, we never would have seen a need for the Civil Rights Act to begin with.
I think we have a differing understanding. So, I’ll quote Ron on the question do State Governors have a right o say “No” to President:
“The states definitely have a right to be wrong. The states are supposed to correct it. But there are limits. That’s why we have a Constitution.”
I think Ron has a higher concept in mind when he says that the best guarantor of Liberty is decentralization of power which I absolutely agree. Number 1 feature of Eastern European (or any current) Communist government was/is heavy centralization of all aspects of a Government. It is a centralized system that made abuse of power such a routine in those countries including the one I grew up. And, coming from a traditionally non-Communist family that had to live in a Communist society I experienced 1st hand what Ron is talking about. I wonder if they read his book “Liberty Defined” in China - if I were holding central power in China that would be the 1st book to ban.