Kind of like Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Samuelson’s comment about one economic theory: “It successfully predicted nine of the past five recessions.”
If we confine this to the Trail of Tears specifically, I suppose so. I should’ve been more precise. But didn’t Jackson sign the Indian Removal Act of 1830? He strongly supported these policies.
Massacres and forced removals often do. This logic could also be used to justify slavery.
One genocidal “mistake” is enough, thank you!
I’m not of that mentality. And I’m glad not to share a mentality with a butcher like Jackson, who did, after all, kill his share of Mexicans, too.
And Ron Paul is going to stop this with his modified DeLorean?
You seem to be under the illusion that when you say “we” and when I say “we” that we’re referring to the same thing.
Those evil Cherokees, born and living on our land!
So, whatever happened to jrodefeld, anyway? AFAICT he has not been sighted here since Galileo Galilei grabbed the baton back in post #300.
If these guys really do get paid by somebody to improve the image of Ron Paul on internet forums, ISTM their employer is wasting his money.
jrodefeld usually posts later in the day, I think. I’m sure he’ll be thrilled with where this thread has gone.
Okay. What do you think is the purpose of the Constitution? My thinking and that of the founders was a contract between the people and their government strictly defining what functions the Federal Government would have. The rest would be delegated to the states and to the people. This was to prevent Tyrannical government and abuses of the peoples liberties. My view is that over the years, we have “made the constitution a blank paper by construction” as Thomas Jefferson warned, essentially rendering it meaningless.
Also, if you respect liberty, don’t you agree unbridled government power is a serious thread to liberty?
Whether or not we can agree on what exactly the role of government should be, you should agree that there should be limits, and it should be clearly defined. Today, there is no rules and no limits. That is a serious threat to liberty.
The list is pretty kooky.
Examples:
- it says Madison started the War. No, the 12th congress declared war. And unlike today, this was a bottom up war, rather than a top-down war. Today, the military leaders decide they want a war, then issue propaganda to get public support.
In the early 1800s, Jefferson and Madison opposed war. But gradually the people started elected more warlike congressmen until the 12th congress was elected and made Henry Clay the Speaker of the House.
So the list is wrong here. And Madison ended the war halfway through, that’s why the real issues of the war were not covered in the treaty of Ghent. Madison could have sent Jackson up to conquer Canada after New Orleans, but Madison wanted to keep loss of life and property to a minimum.
- the list has Zachary Taylor first. Taylor was Madison’s second cousin and followed James Madison’s principles as president. In fact, his whole life was modeled after Madison. For example, in the Mexican war, he was relieved of command becasue he was too nice to Mexican prisoners.
So if Taylor is so good, why is Madison bad?
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John Tyler is second. Tyler was educated by another of James Madison’s second cousins, Bishop James Madison. Tyler specifically said he modeled his presidency after that of James Madison.
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Monroe is 4th. But Monroe was a disciple of Madison who constantly asked Madison for advice when he was presdient. Madison even wrote the first draft of the Monroe doctrine.
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van Buren is 10th. But letters exist of van Buren writing letters to James Madison, asking him how to interpret the Constitution, and Buren followed that advice as president.
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Jefferson is 11th. But evidence from foreign archives shows that Jefferson was mostly Madison’s puppet as president, with Secretary of Strate Madison making all the important decisions. Madison was Jefferson’s best friend for 50 years.
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Washington is 12th. But when Washingto first took office, he was mostly Madison’s puppet who told him exactly what to do and what to say. Madison wrote his inaugural address and also the first draft of his farewell address.
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Jackson is 15th. But Jackson’s private secretary and closest advisor was Nicholas Trist (Jackson made little use of his cabinet). Trist was a lifelong Madison disciple who modeled his entire life and philosophy after Madison and guided Jackson through things like the bank war and the nullificatio crisis. Trist was the grandson of Mary House. House owned the house where Madison stayed whenever he went to Philadeplhia including during the Constitutional convention of 1787. Trist grew up idolizing Madison. Trist was at the center of ALL of Jackson’s correspondence from 1828-1834.
In 1832, Jackson even travelled down to Virginia to make a personal visit to Madison, where Madison gave him the go-ahead to get rid pf the bank, and instructed him on nullification.
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JQ Adams is 16th. But Adams, although initally opposed ot Madison, changed his mind (he remained opposed to Jefferson). In 1836, when Madison died, Adams spent two months writing the most amazing eulogy of a president to another president ever written. The admiration of Adams to Madison is so great as to stagger the imagionation.
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Pierce is 20th. I don’t know much about Pierce except to say he seems to be another one of the types who modeled his actions after Madison. I could have said the same thing about Fillmore who is higehr up on the list.
So this list is bunk.
John Quincy Adams on James Madison (1836)
I agree its not a great argument. It doesn’t even approach, however, the top ten most ludicrous pro-Paul arguments in this thread.
James Madison didn’t actually like Jackson all that much. He blocked Jackson’s presidency for 12 years.
Please explain that “no rules and no limits” bit.
And stop telling people what they “should agree” about…
Hopefully you noticed what website it came from. Just trying to give you a little perspective on what your libertarian and Ron Paul supporter cohorts are thinking.
Neither list is very accurate. It just shows how much work we have to do to educate the general public before the 200th anniversary of the War on 1812.
The War of 1812 is the key to liberty and a Ron Paul victory in 2012. It is the one irrefutable argument against the War on Terror.
The issue is that a lot of what I am saying won’t make sense to you unless you spend a little time watching some videos or reading some books. I will try to make my opinions known without overly relying on lengthy videos and economics literature, but I would think at least some on here would be willing to look at some of the videos I have posted.
For your benefit though, I will lay out my argument about why Ron Paul’s positions on the issues make sense to me:
First I believe we have power that is too centralized in too few hands in our society. Our government doesn’t really work for us any more. Our foreign policy is dictated by war profiteering in the Military Industrial Complex and encouraged by non elected UN people and international groups such as the Council of Foreign Relations.
I believe when we go to war, it needs to be formally declared by Congress and there needs to be explicit proof that our national security is threatened. We should not nation build or engage in preemptive attacks. I don’t believe we should station troops around the world.
In foreign affairs, peace and diplomacy, free trade and honest friendship with all is the policy we should pursue. No entangling alliances.
I would like to see a United States were war is a very rare occurrence and we are known as the nation leading the example towards world peace rather than the one most likely to commit aggressive acts of war and threaten people.
In economics, I support a rejection of Corporatism, cutting all subsidies and establishing the principles of Capitalism, that is allow bankruptcies to occur, end too big to fail and separate Corporate and State Power. Make it clear that our government is answerable to the people, not the corporations.
Reform our banking system starting with a full Audit of the Federal Reserve system. Expose all the conflicts of interest in our banking system and prosecute all fraud. Once we audit the federal reserve and show the American people what they are actually doing, they will overwhelmingly be supportive of ending the federal reserve system and placing the function of “coining” money under the Congress, out in the open as the Constitution demands.
Crack down hard on corporate crime. Make a serious example of the most egregious examples of Wall Street fraud and put them in jail for life. Show that we will not have two standards of justice in this country. Equal justice under the law.
In personal affairs, I believe in restoring the Bill of Rights to their original standing before Bush came in to office. Repeal the Patriot Act. Don’t move towards martial law. Restore Habeas Corpus. No National ID card.
End the War on Drugs and pardon any non violent “criminals” currently in our prison system. Allow all consensual activity that doesn’t harm anybody else.
Cut spending by ending overseas military bases, ending the wars and slashing the Defense budget. Pay down the deficit and temporarily fund Medicare and Social Security. Let young people opt out of these programs if they want.
Allow school choice through vouchers and tax credits and give competition to all monopolistic governmental agencies and programs. Its fine to have a government “option”, but we should ALWAYS protect the private option. Allow competition in mail delivery, allow competition with Amtrak. If we did, we would already have those futuristic high speed rail systems that other nations have.
In monetary policy, allow private money and competing currencies to circulate. This is the number one thing that we could do to restore liberty to this nation. People would no longer have to be slaves of debt to big banks. People wouldn’t have to depend on a secretive Central Bank setting interest rates. People could save their money in a more sound currency.
Reestablish National Sovereignty and back out of the United Nations, IMF and international agencies which are unelected. We can trade and talk and practice diplomacy just fine on our own. We wouldn’t circumvent the Constitution to go to war under UN resolutions, for example.
These are my believes and Dr Paul’s as well. Now that they are laid out for you, you can comment on them all you want.
You convinced me. I’m voting for the James Madison/Andrew Jackson ticket in 2012. If Ron Paul is lucky, maybe they’ll appoint him head of the ONDCP or something.
Hell yeah. Thanks for that list. I saw it posted on a few blogs, but didn’t think to link to it. Yeah, Ron Paul would be a serious contender if he were to run. The tide is turning in his favor.
Ron Paul is the only viable GOP candidate who follows the plain language of the US Constitution in conjunction with the principles of the Founding Fathers.
We accept you vote.
Wait - someone thinks the War of 1812 was an important war? The War of 1812 wasn’t even the most important war the English were fighting in 1812. Do you think the Brits really cared about some minor scuffle at the ass-end of the world while they were busy fighting Napoleon?
The tide came and went. And I don’t mean the tide the British were sailing on in 1812.
Have we gotten yet an explanation as to why the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812 is going to be a much bigger media event than, say, the 100th anniversary of the Spanish-American War was in 1998? (Besides the fact that someone’s apparently paying random internet posters to defend it.)