RON PAUL FOR 2008?
By Steven Yates
January 17, 2007
NewsWithViews.com
All too often our columns trade in bad news! I’m sure I’ve given past readers a few sleepless nights. It is my pleasure this go around to deliver some good news! Some very good news!
According to an Associated Press report released late last week, Dr. Ron Paul (R-Tx) is contemplating a run for the presidency in 2008. He has filed papers in Texas allowing him to form an exploratory committee that can raise money.
The one--time medical doctor and nine--term Congressman from southeast Texas last ran for president in 1988 on the Libertarian ticket, and received over 400,000 votes. This time around, he will be running as a Republican, which means going head-to-head against much better known (and better supported) figures such as John McCain.
This is an opportunity for what might be a pursuit worth thinking about--retaking the Republican Party, now that the warmongering neocons have run it pretty much into the ground.
Here’s a thought: both major parties may be controlled from the top--but several of my associates have offered compelling arguments that a power struggle has commenced within the super-elite itself. Arrayed on one side are the longstanding international bankers who want to operate through entities like the United Nations and the World Economic Forum. On the other are the neocons and their monied backers, who have a vision of Pax Americana, a global empire run from Washington (and Israel). Lest there be any misunderstanding: both camps are globalist through and through. Both have promoted (are promoting) Fabian socialism and communitarianism. Both would dissolve our national borders in a heartbeat if they thought they could get away with it. But they differ over specifics. One of the areas where the two camps are butting heads is over what to do about the mess the Bush Administration has made in Iraq.
A few months ago, Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, published an article declaring the Iraq War unwinnable and calling for an exit strategy. The neocon-controlled Bush Administration wants to "stay the course," however, with Bush just having called for another 21,500 troops to be sent there. The neocons are salivating at the mouth to attack Iran!
If I were in the first group, I’d be wondering about the sanity of these people I had made the mistake of promoting into power! (It’s happened before. I sometimes wonder if the banksters and other corporate interests who propelled both Hitler and Stalin into power had counted on the pure evil and bloodlust that manifested itself in those regimes.)
This is an opportunity for the freedom movement in this country! Dr. Paul is one of the few Constitutionalists in Congress. He casts his votes exclusively on what he believes the Constitution empowers the federal government to do, and votes consistently against bills he believes exceed the authority given Congress by the Constitution. This, of course, places him at odds with most of the rest of Congress, including the powers-that-be in the Republican Party. After all, the Republicans no less than the Democrats departed from the Constitution long ago. Both endorse the welfare nanny state, just in different degrees.
Nor will Ron Paul do the bidding of the corporatist globalists. There is also nothing in the Constitution that empowers the federal government to "partner" with big business, or to supply it with corporate welfare. Paul has cosponsored a resolution (H.C.R. 487) to put a stop to the slow, gradualist merger of the U.S. with Canada and Mexico in the name of "free trade" which isn’t unless you are part of the corporate elite.
We can’t say this about more visible figures such as John McCain, beloved of the mainstream power structure. I doubt we can say it about anyone else who might seek the Republican nomination except possibly for Tom Tancredo who seems also to have been sending out feelers (and who cosponsored H.C.R. 487).
Dr. Paul appointed Kent Snyder, a former staffer on his Libertarian campaign, to chair the exploratory committee. Snyder told AP, "There’s no question that it’s an uphill battle, and that Dr. Paul is an underdog. But we think it’s well worth doing and we’ll let the voters decide."
So here is what we have to do--we refers to everyone who wants to live in a free society. Should Dr. Paul officially announce his candidacy for the Republican nomination in 2008, we need to get behind him and start working for him--whether through financial contributions for those able to make them, knocking on doors where feasible, making presentations, or producing written materials like this article. If Ron Paul is in the race, we should begin bombarding mainstream newspapers with guest columns and letters to the editor. If the columns and letters are refused publication, start circulating them online, through the many websites, forums, blogs and other Internet resources available to us. Where possible, start putting up banners and signs along Interstate highways, exits, and major intersections where traffic often slows. That way thousands of ordinary commuters, fed up with government bureaucrats, ridiculous regulations and having over 40 percent of their incomes taken away in taxes (including the hidden tax of inflation) will see: RON PAUL, Republican and Constitutionalist, PRESIDENT IN 2008!!!
The solution to any mainstream media blackout on a Ron Paul campaign: take direct action to thwart it.
Now this calls on the Freedom Movement to do something many of its members find very hard. It calls on us to set aside our differences and work together for a common goal--establishing the credibility, plausibility and practicality of a Paul Presidency that could reverse the present direction of this country.
The inability of different groups and organizations to cooperate has hurt the Freedom Movement terribly! Christians, for example, often refuse to work with non-Christians, and vice versa. They are often uncomfortable working with those Libertarians whose worldview they see as "too secular." Libertarians are just as uncomfortable working with them. Christians don’t always get along with each other--nor do Libertarians who have fallen into an in-house squabble over who is the "purest" Libertarian. Both have their differences with, e.g., the Constitution Party. There are many other groups each will not work with; some, in fairness, seem to prefer to remain isolated. There are single-issue groups focused on, e.g., the income tax.
Should Dr. Paul take the plunge and declare himself a candidate, every one of these needs to set aside their factional differences and quabbles and come together under one umbrella. I would go as far as to say that if Ron Paul runs, third parties should refrain from running a candidate of their own (have someone on standby, perhaps, in case Dr. Paul by some chance elects to withdraw altogether). Other groups also need to get with this program: the John Birch Society, Sons of Confederate Veterans, the League of the South, and so on.
I am hoping that should he choose to run, Dr. Paul can count on the support of think tanks such as the Ludwig von Mises Institute, the Reason Foundation, the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, and the Institute for Humane Studies, among many others less known nationally but capable of doing great work at the state and local levels. Free market economists such as Walter Williams will doubtless get behind Dr. Paul, as will their equivalents among philosophers such as the ever-prolific Tibor R. Machan and myself. There are differences in all of these. We don’t all work from the same first premises or have absolutely identical visions of the kind of society we want. People who are thinking as individuals probably never will. But we should all be united in the belief that individual freedoms, moral responsibility, private property rights, genuinely free markets (not corporatism), and the rule of law are necessary conditions for prosperity in this life.
We do not have a choice in this! Cooperation among all of us "underdogs" is only way a Ron Paul candidacy has even the slightest hope of making a dent against a firmly entrenched Establishment. We can worry about our differences on our own time!
Last weekend, Aaron Russo, filmmaker extraordinaire and creator of America: Freedom to Fascism, pledged to work on Dr. Paul’s behalf despite some rather serious health problems. Dr. Paul, of course, appears prominently in A:FTF pointing out that "the Federal Reserve is no more federal than Federal Express" and expressing worry about our expanding Brave New Police State. [To order Aaron Russo's new documovie America: Freedom to Fascism click on the banner below.
In a letter sent out to those of us on the A:FTF team and widely circulated on the Internet, Russo wrote, "Congressman Paul will be the only uncompromising defender of the Constitution in the race" I am 1,000% behind him!
Russo continued, "Ron Paul has stepped up to the plate because he knows what we all know: the noose is tightening, and there isn't much time if we hope to restore to Constitutional Government. I called Ron yesterday to tell him I am on board to do anything it takes to support his campaign."
He stated what I have reiterated here: "Now is the time for the entire Freedom Movement, all Third Parties, all good Americans everywhere, from all political stripes and persuasions, to unite to overtake the weakened Republican Party. Stand firmly behind Ron Paul, and work to restore our Constitutional Republic..."
"There isn't a better man for the job. He has an impeccable voting record. He is ‘right on,’ on Freedom and Sovereignty issues. In a time of universal deceit, Congressman Paul dares to commit the revolutionary act of telling the truth." This last, of course, is a reference to the George Orwell quote that opens A:FTF.
Sound advice! In the last analysis, we have just two questions to consider: (1) Do we really wish to reverse our present course and live in a free society? (2) What are we willing to do to make it happen? We may have here an opportunity to support one of the few men in Washington who still has the vision of our Founding Fathers. There are going to be naysayers who will claim Dr. Paul’s views are "outdated," or tell us "it can’t be done." (One article has already described a Ron Paul candidacy as "quixotic.") When the naysayers have specific arguments, let us answer them. When they do no more than scoff, point this out and then ignore them.
I recall a rather active member of the South Carolina Libertarian Party based in Columbia, a very energetic man named Dick Winchell whom many of us greatly admired for his willingness to go into the Capitol building and get in the faces of the South Carolina General Assembly. Unfortunately, he was often very much alone. Finally, fed up with the mere moaning and groaning so many Libertarians do about how terrible the government is, he stood up at a meeting and said, "When you guys are ready to do something, call me!"
With Ron Paul, we have an opportunity to do something. Let’s not squander it--especially, let’s not squander it by fighting amongst ourselves. There are, of course, separate battles to be fought--against Real ID, for example, or against electronic voting, and against the stealth merger of the U.S., Canada and Mexico. A Ron Paul anywhere near the White House put a stop to all the unconstitutional police state tactics and all the globalist nonsense. But he has to get there first. To paraphrase Kent Snyder, this has to happen at the grassroots level or it will not happen at all. And it is probably our last chance!
© 2007 Steven Yates - All Rights Reserved
Steven Yates earned his Ph.D. in Philosophy in 1987 at the University of Georgia and has taught the subject at a number of colleges and universities around the Southeast. He currently teaches philosophy at the University of South Carolina Upstate and Greenville Technical College, and also does a little e-commerce involving real free trade. He is on the South Carolina Board of The Citizens Committee to Stop the FTAA.
He is the author of Civil Wrongs: What Went Wrong With Affirmative Action (1994), Worldviews: Christian Theism Versus Modern Materialism (2005), around two dozen philosophical articles and reviews in refereed journals and anthologies, and over a hundred articles on the World Wide Web. He lives in Greenville, South Carolina, where he writes a weekly column for the Times Examiner and is at work on a book length version of his popular series to be entitled The Real Matrix (hopefully!) to be completed this summer.
E-Mail: freeyourmindinsc@yahoo.com.
