Perry de Havilland writes what is the essential Ron Paul post to date, Ron Paul - so what is a pro-liberty hawk supposed to think?
So then along comes Ron Paul, the first US presidential candidate since Ronald Regan with any notion whatsoever that the state is way way way too big. Moreover here comes a person who thinks the only way liberty can be preserved is to take a radical axe to Leviathan's tentacles and re-establish constitutional limited government. Cool. Very cool, in fact. So do I really really like Ron Paul? Well I like him but less than you might think as some of his remarks are borderline delusional 'troofer' stuff and that does him no credit at all. Is he actually going to win? Probably not but that is not what this article is about (commenters please note). Do I even want him to win? Well that is what this article is about.
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So what would happen if Ron Paul really did win the White House in 2008? Well in my opinion, domestically speaking the United States would experience the greatest growth of liberty and (consequently) prosperity since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Monstrous tumours on the American body politic like the abuse of eminent domain, the RICO statutes and the absurdly named Patriot Act would go into the garbage heap of history where the corpses of slavery and the Jim Crow laws rot away. Absurdities like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, something that has done more to export US jobs and capital than almost anything else in the last few years, would vanish like the morning mist. That magnificent pinnacle of the European Enlightenment called the US Bill of Rights would once again be worth the paper it is written on. If these things came to pass it would, in my not so humble opinion, be a very very good thing indeed.
There's much more, and a lively discussion in the comments.
Posted by Walter at December 22, 2007 07:24 PMThe fly in this wonderful ointment is just like last election in which a lot od moderate democrats were elected on the premise that they supported winning the war, and were not tax-raisers, or some variation on that theme. The problem is that the congress is run on a seniority system and the senior Dems are all old 60s retreads. Wanna get something passed, kid? then vote the way Ms. Pelosi tells you, or else.
The same thing would happen to Mr. Paul as president. Sign what the old bulls give you and we'll think about discussing your ideas as soon as we finish up with the pork allocations. And don't try to cross us. Remember you have NO fellow party members in either house of the congress.