Liberty MavenRon Paul’s Constitutional Jihad
November 22nd, 2008 12:55 am | by Marc Gallagher | Published in Activism, Constitution, Election, Libertarianism, Liberty, Maven Commentary, Neo-con, Philosophy, Politics, Ron Paul, War, law, terrorism | 2 Responses
Perhaps it is unflattering, and potentially offensive, to suggest that Ron Paul’s effort to restore the Constitution as the rule of law in America is a jihad, but a jihad it is. He has devoted his life to this cause. While the majority focus on the violent definition of the word, there is also such a thing as a non-violent jihad.
Ron Paul often speaks with praise for those that practice peaceful civil disobedience. He lists Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi among his heroes. Both men were practitioners of non-violent jihad.
From Wikipedia:
In Modern Standard Arabic, jihad is one of the correct terms for a struggle for any cause, violent or not, religious or secular (though كفاح kifāḥ is also used). For instance, Mahatma Gandhi’s struggle for Indian independence is called a “jihad” in Modern Standard Arabic (as well as many other dialects of Arabic)
Ron Paul, thanks mostly to the media, has earned the “extreme” label. Indeed some even transformed the word “libertarian”, as applied to Ron Paul, into a snarling invective. American politics has devolved into something akin to professional wrestling: numb skulls blustering into microphones followed by false maneuvers that excite zealots, but leave thinking people incredulous at the lunacy of it all.
Ron Paul doesn’t dream of picking up a chair in anger. Instead he purposefully rolls up copies of the Constitution and swings for their heads with his rhetoric. Unfortunately for all of us, it usually passes above their heads. In the rare occurrence it connects liberty is reborn.
It is a sad day when a man preaching the principles found in the supreme law of the land is deemed extreme while those that ignore the law and him are the status quo. So today, I am sad, but tomorrow is another day and another fight.
Ron Paul is a Constitutional jihadist extreme fundamentalist and he’s exactly the man America needs in these trying times. The pundits will again give him the extreme label if he chooses to run in 2012. They’d probably even do that in lieu of sounding the alarm about his age. To make his point really hit home he should embrace the extremism as a badge of honor. In 2012, whether he runs as a Republican or Libertarian, his campaign slogan should be:
Constitutional Jihad For America
Of course, he’d have to hand out a dictionary with the definition of ‘jihad’ highlighted to win votes from professional wrestling fans.
To win over his fellow lawmakers, he’d have to hand them something strange and foreign, the U.S. Constitution. Judging from recent years they’re already familiar with jihad.
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November 23rd, 2008 at 7:15 pm (#)
OK, I am going to say this one last time.
The Constitution was and is a bundle of compromises, with any number of illegal or questionable actions by the Framers and Founders in the first decade or two of its existence.
A few examples are the Sedition Act, the Louisiana Purchase, the undeclared war with France, the First U S Bank (followed by the Second in Madison’s administration)
and the problem with the way the President and VP were elected, remedied after the near debacle of the 1800 election.
And the beginning so judicial review and presidential perogitives and certain Congressional practices began also during that first twenty years–
If these so-called giants, those Framers and Founders, can muck up the sacred Constitution within the same space of time from the fall of the berlin Wall to now–then what hoipe has Paul or anyone of reinstating the strict Constitution of at least 1787 or perahps later with the Bill–all you’d get would be another twenty years od space before the roof fell in–and the culprits?
No, not Wall St, but Main St.
it never fails to amuse me that most libertarians will claim that people aka the free market will make good choices, while the same people aka as voters will make bad choices. What? People are good chosers on Mondays when they go to market but bad ones on Tuesdays when they vote? hardly. Madison remarked that even if every citizen of Athens was a Socrates, you would still have a mob.
And this mob, even though prevented from directly governing or, indeed, controlling the free market (the choices of products is really in the hands of the producers, just as the political choices are limited by the Constitution and the political parties) will still get what it wants if it wants it long enough and gets those representatives to make law or products for it.
If some set of consumers want say, a SUV and a George Bush, and they press for it long enough, they will get thgose things and people despite the stuff about gas guzzlers and neoconservatives.
Indeed, J S Mill, in his On Liberty, after proclaiming the sovereign individual and his rights, denied self-government to the immature, saying that despotism is a legitimate mode of government when dealing with barbarians–youknow them–the enemies of the environment or the neoconservatives or whatever other enemies of the people there are–of course, if the people as a whole go off their medicine, well, then we can only hope for the despotism of some enlightened statesman to get us back on track–
And Ron Paul has no attributes in this area–voting No is not any such activity of a statesman. And running back to the Constitution of 1787 or even 1800 is no solution–this throw back evades the questions that vexes America and have been and are with us.
But I have said all of this before–and I shall stop, as I am spitting into the wind in this forum–
I can only say this last thing, which usually hurts those who do know better–that we are in for eights years of Obama, if the economy recovers and we get out of the wars and no other uncertainty pounds down his door–and if things are better in 2016, then the Dems will have another four years–by which time Ron Paul will be long retired and his Revolution dead and buried.
The question is what will you all do in 2020, when it seems that that year will be the next time for a so-called change?
The Revolution and the Paulites are already buried but are excused by the fact that they do not know this–
November 25th, 2008 at 9:10 am (#)
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