Liberty Maven

Following the recent Obama-sanctioned continued bombing of Pakistan, picking up right where George W. Bush left off, we get some critical words from Ron Paul in his latest video.

There’s no gray area with Ron Paul, you are either an interventionist or a non-interventionist. Barack Obama continues the Bush doctrine of preemptive war. As usual Ron Paul is quick to point out the folly of intervention.

In fact, Ron Paul’s political views can be summed up with the following:

“The federal government should leave us alone, leave private businesses alone, and leave other countries alone.”

Or perhaps better still would be: “Don’t meddle!”

I’m still waiting for the outrage from the Obamacons. I will have to wait for a long time from the looks of it, but the backlash will come. In the meantime we have to put up with gag-inducing videos like this one from some of our favorite actors.

For a much better, down to earth, and honest video watch the one from Ron Paul below.

Ron Paul has an uncanny and effortless way of making neo-conservative Republicans’ heads explode. He merely tells the truth. The modern day Republicans are desperate for an answer to “The Obama Effect” but they dare not climb up Ron Paul’s liberty tree to get there. Instead they dream the impossible dream.

They dream that they can somehow keep one hand in the neo-con cookie jar while the other hand waves over the Constitution. When Dr. Ron Paul comes along and tells them its time to amputate the gangrene neo-conservatism they dart out of the office crying like babies. One would think they would get the hint with their string of losses the past few years. Their latest and ultimate loss came this week when Al “Dog-gone it! People like me!” Franken was declared the winner over Norm Coleman in the hotly contested Minnesota Senate race.

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With Barack Obama set to continue to wage the war on terror in a different locale it is important to understand that justification for such actions is no better than Bush’s old justifications for going into Iraq. One of the best arguments against such actions comes from David R. Henderson.

The question arises, “Should Canada’s government remove its military presence from Afghanistan in 2011, remove it earlier, or keep it past 2011?” This question arises for other members of the occupying coalition besides Canada. To answer it, I propose that we step back and consider how good the case was for invading and occupying Afghanistan in the first place.

Henderson continues his argument using hypotheticals that reinforce his overall point quite clearly. This article is a great one to send off to your war on terror loving neo-conservative friends and family.

Read the entire article.

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.

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After the latest “let’s eat our own” moment in the Republican Party by South Carolina’s Jim DeMint I have a suggestion for the GOP. Pssst… it has to do with Ron Paul.

First, here are DeMint’s scathing words (from CNN):

“We have to be honest, and there’s a lot of blame to go around, but I have to mention George Bush, and I have to mention Ted Stevens, and I’m afraid I even have to mention John McCain,” he said.

DeMint offered a long list of complaints about McCain’s record in the Senate and on the campaign trail.

“McCain, who is proponent of campaign finance reform that weakened party organizations and basically put George Soros in the driver’s seat,” DeMint said. “His proposal for amnesty for illegals. His support of global warming, cap-and-trade programs that will put another burden on our economy. And of course, his embrace of the bailout right before the election was probably the nail in our coffin this last election. And he has been an opponent of drilling in ANWR, at a time when energy is so important. It really didn’t fit the label, but he was our package.”

Bush and Stevens, he said, had corrupted the party brand by expanding the size of government and engaging in wasteful government spending. Had Republicans not strayed from their core beliefs in recent years, DeMint argued, the election results might have been different.

“Americans do prefer a traditional conservative government,” he said. “They just did not believe Republicans were going to give it to them.”

DeMint said he would introduce a Senate resolution next week to boot Stevens out of the Republican caucus, and “force votes” on Senate seniority rules that have allowed certain members to hold onto power. However, DeMint twice confused Ted Stevens with Ted Kennedy, drawing chuckles from the audience of Republicans, who hold neither senator in particularly high regard.

“One of our principles is that power corrupts, and you need to disperse it,” DeMint said. “And if our own party allows ourselves to be destroyed by this idea, and are not willing to stand up, then we have to change everyone at the top.”

Senator DeMint, I agree and have a suggestion for you. Put Ron Paul at the top, or at the very least, in some kind of leadership role. Once he’s there, listen to the man, and follow his example. He has the power to lead the Republican Party out of these dark days.

Of course, this is yet another hopeless dream. You won’t do such a thing. You, nor your party peers, have the guts. At the very least you have a severe lack of smell. The answer is right under your nose within your own party, but some kind of neo-conservative misfiring synapse is blocking your nose from smelling liberty.

Seek a doctor for what ails you. Seek Dr. Ron Paul.

With the Republican Party in the process of choking to death on its own imperialistic big government vomit, I’m reminded of a true Ron Paul classic demonstrating yet again his penchant for delivering a blunt required message rather than the usual party line candy-coated message we get from his lawmaking peers. Ron Paul is an economic and political rainmaker.

When he rises to deliver a speech in the House of Representatives he knows his words will be delivered to an echo chamber, but he does it anyway. He does it for the cause of human liberty and we love him for it.

If there is anyone out there who can make the following happen, please do so:

1. Gather all Republican lawmakers and governors together.
2. Strap them in theater seats.
3. Play Ron Paul’s “We’ve Been Neo-Conned” speech from 2003 on the screen.
4. When the speech ends, start it over again.
5. Repeat number 4 until they all reject their evil ways and embrace the Constitution.

Lady Liberty is wielding her paddle and the GOP have been very bad children. With each THWACK the only response should be, “Thank you, may I have another.”

As Ron Paul says in “We’ve Been Neo-Conned“,

Someone is responsible, and it’s important that those of us who love liberty, and resent big-brother government, identify the philosophic supporters who have the most to say about the direction our country is going. If they’re wrong – and I believe they are – we need to show it, alert the American people, and offer a more positive approach to government. However, this depends on whether the American people desire to live in a free society and reject the dangerous notion that we need a strong central government to take care of us from the cradle to the grave. Do the American people really believe it’s the government’s responsibility to make us morally better and economically equal? Do we have a responsibility to police the world, while imposing our vision of good government on everyone else in the world with some form of utopian nation building? If not, and the enemies of liberty are exposed and rejected, then it behooves us to present an alternative philosophy that is morally superior and economically sound and provides a guide to world affairs to enhance peace and commerce.

It’s quite amusing (if not nauseating) to hear McCain and Palin calling Obama a socialist at every turn if you pay the slightest attention to the ideas McCain embraces.  A nice little article at HighClearing.com successfully reams McCain for his hypocrisy:

The word “socialism” can mean many things to many people, anything from Western European style social welfare to state ownership of the means of production to the New Deal or the Great Society or a wide range of other usages. I’ll let those who know (or at least claim to know) more about the real meaning of the word have the debate over which usage is proper (mostly because I hate debates over whether somebody is using a politically-charged word correctly). Instead, I’ll engage the McCain rhetoric on its own terms.

McCain, just like Obama, believes that taxes should be levied for the purpose of funding social programs that redistribute income downwards. (We’ll leave aside, for the moment, the fact that both of them also believe that taxes should be levied for the purpose of funding a bloated military-industrial complex and other things that redistribute at least some of the income upward.) McCain and Obama may envision different forms and scopes for those programs, and those differences may or may not have profound consequences in practice. However, the McCain rhetoric is being employed to argue that just about any downward redistribution is a type of socialism. If it is (at least in McCain’s usage of the term) then McCain is a socialist. Maybe not as much of a socialist as Obama (we’ll leave aside welfare for the rich, for the moment) but a socialist nonetheless.

Read the rest here.

The Libertarian candidate for President in 2000 was Harry Browne. That year he released a campaign book with the title, “The Great Libertarian Offer“. The positive libertarian sentiment in that book was both educational and inspiring to me and many other liberty seeking individuals. There has been quite a bit of talk in the past year about the demise of the Republican party to the delight of loyal and liberal Democrats everywhere. This demise represents a great opportunity for libertarian ideas to either reinforce the Libertarian Party itself or modify the Republican Party’s neo-conservatism into libertarian conservatism.

I say opportunity because the outlook for liberty at this point in our country’s history is quite bleak. The popular political culture pendulum is swinging far to the left with Barack Obama’s pending victory. Following 9/11 Neo-conservative Right ideals were in vogue. The question remains what happens when the rebound occurs from the current move to the left? This is where libertarians can capitalize if the cards are played properly.

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Over at AntiWar.com”, Pat Buchanan’s commentary on the looming budget crisis is, as usual, honest and direct.  The bottom line is that the American Empire cannot be sustained, and just like the Roman Empire, it must eventually fall.

Uncle Sam’s Visa card is about to be stamped ‘Canceled.’ The budget
is going to have to go under the knife. But what gets cut? Social
Security and Medicare are surely exempt. Seniors have already taken a
huge hit in their 401(k)s. And as the Democrats are crafting another
$150 billion stimulus package for the working poor and middle class,
Medicaid and food stamps are untouchable. Interest on the debt cannot
be cut. It is going up. Will a Democratic Congress slash unemployment
benefits, welfare, education, student loans, veterans benefits — in a
recession? No way. Yet, that is almost the entire U.S. budget –
except for defense, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and foreign aid.
And this is where the ax will eventually fall. It is the American
Empire that is going to be liquidated.

Excellent article. Read it now.

You laughed at him. You made fun of him. You called him extreme, a gadfly, a kook, and many other trite terms of marginalization. His only crime was the truth in stark contrast to every calculated, vacuous platitude uttered by his Republican opponents. Now I can’t help but imagine Ron Paul sitting in his easy chair surrounded by gold and silver bullion smiling knowingly saying, “Who’s laughing now, bitches?!”

No, that isn’t Ron Paul’s style, as we learned from the debate where Paul whispered, “Make, fun buddy”, under his breath in reaction to yet another moronic insult emanating from somewhere between Mitt Romney’s sculpted sideburns. Ron Paul is a man deserving of integrity and respect at work in the sea of extreme buffoonery that is Washington DC.

Nothing illustrates such an assertion better than the last few weeks of having to listen to every pundit and politico tell us why we all had to fall in line behind a bailout bill that no one wanted to pass and no one was sure would work.  But the sky was falling and the wolf was around the bend so pass it we must. America, our government didn’t listen to us. We have no representation anymore. The last vestige of capitalism is nearing death. We are on the road to economic slavery.

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