What a strange race, this. And what a strange time. We’re finally out of Iraq - but still in Afghanistan. Our diplomatic relations with the Middle East are frayed from the Arab Spring. Most importantly, our country is on the verge of bankruptcy, and its credit rating has been duly downgraded. You’d think that this problem, which became clear as soon as the stock markets tanked in 2008, would be met by our elected leaders with a swift, simple, solution. Yeah, right.
With Obama’s first term coming to an end, the opposition now scrambles to find a challenger, and candidates have presented themselves en masse. Newt Gingrich, Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum...
To me, these candidates are all “me-too” copycats of each other, with their platforms and their beliefs. Their campaigns definitely reflect this... their ads, their behavior during national televised debates, and their MASSIVE media coverage are all nitpicky attacks on each other. Yesterday’s USA Today article on the matter reads like a soap opera. Santorum called Paul’s candidacy “a sideshow,” saying the libertarian’s isolationist positions on foreign policy make it impossible for him to win the nomination. Gingrich scoffed at Romney as “a Massachusetts moderate” who has benefited from “dishonest” attack ads aired by his backers.
One candidate seems to stand out from the pack for many reasons. One reason is that he is subject to more attacks from his fellow republicans than any other. Another is that the media has deliberately ignored him, like they did Occupy Wall Street, throughout his campaign so far. In fact, almost all public scrutiny of Ron Paul appears to be based on the other candidates’ opinion of him, which is odd considering his not-so-tiny fan base. Oh well. Perhaps it’s better he remain a “fringe” candidate until the right moment.
What a minute. What’s this word they keep tossing around about Ron Paul? A fringe candidate? -sigh- look, I keep myself as up-to-speed as possible on American politics, and Paul is no less than a prodigy of Ronald Reagan. His platform, his ideology, is identical to those outlined by Reagan in one of his most renowned speeches, “A Time for Choosing,” which was given in 1964 in support of Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign:
It's time we asked ourselves if we still know the freedoms intended for us by the Founding Fathers. James Madison said, "We base all our experiments on the capacity of mankind for self government."
This idea -- that government was beholden to the people, that it had no other source of power is still the newest, most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.
You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream-the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path.
Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, "What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power." But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector.
Yet any time you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we're denounced as being opposed to their humanitarian goals. It seems impossible to legitimately debate their solutions with the assumption that all of us share the desire to help the less fortunate. They tell us we're always "against," never "for" anything.
We are for a provision that destitution should not follow unemployment by reason of old age, and to that end we have accepted Social Security as a step toward meeting the problem. However, we are against those entrusted with this program when they practice deception regarding its fiscal shortcomings, when they charge that any criticism of the program means that we want to end payments....
We are for aiding our allies by sharing our material blessings with nations which share our fundamental beliefs, but we are against doling out money government to government, creating bureaucracy, if not socialism, all over the world.
We need true tax reform that will at least make a start toward restoring for our children the American Dream that wealth is denied to no one, that each individual has the right to fly as high as his strength and ability will take him.... But we can not have such reform while our tax policy is engineered by people who view the tax as a means of achieving changes in our social structure....
The words in this speech are as relevant today as they were in 1964. We still face the issues of Social Security, of tax reform, of revamping our foreign policy, and of balancing the roles of the public and private sectors. Ron Paul believes, has consistently fought for, and now campaigns on these ideals. For that reason, he has my vote. Not because he’d make a perfect president - even Lincoln and Kennedy were far from perfect - but because he has a plan. His plan encompasses and outdoes those of every other candidate, and he doesn’t need to tear down his fellow candidates to sell his plan. It is simple, yet entirely feasible. I am going to register to vote as soon as I get back to New York, and I will keep my readers updated on the election as new developments unfold.
With Obama’s first term coming to an end, the opposition now scrambles to find a challenger, and candidates have presented themselves en masse. Newt Gingrich, Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum...
To me, these candidates are all “me-too” copycats of each other, with their platforms and their beliefs. Their campaigns definitely reflect this... their ads, their behavior during national televised debates, and their MASSIVE media coverage are all nitpicky attacks on each other. Yesterday’s USA Today article on the matter reads like a soap opera. Santorum called Paul’s candidacy “a sideshow,” saying the libertarian’s isolationist positions on foreign policy make it impossible for him to win the nomination. Gingrich scoffed at Romney as “a Massachusetts moderate” who has benefited from “dishonest” attack ads aired by his backers.
One candidate seems to stand out from the pack for many reasons. One reason is that he is subject to more attacks from his fellow republicans than any other. Another is that the media has deliberately ignored him, like they did Occupy Wall Street, throughout his campaign so far. In fact, almost all public scrutiny of Ron Paul appears to be based on the other candidates’ opinion of him, which is odd considering his not-so-tiny fan base. Oh well. Perhaps it’s better he remain a “fringe” candidate until the right moment.
What a minute. What’s this word they keep tossing around about Ron Paul? A fringe candidate? -sigh- look, I keep myself as up-to-speed as possible on American politics, and Paul is no less than a prodigy of Ronald Reagan. His platform, his ideology, is identical to those outlined by Reagan in one of his most renowned speeches, “A Time for Choosing,” which was given in 1964 in support of Barry Goldwater’s presidential campaign:
It's time we asked ourselves if we still know the freedoms intended for us by the Founding Fathers. James Madison said, "We base all our experiments on the capacity of mankind for self government."
This idea -- that government was beholden to the people, that it had no other source of power is still the newest, most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.
You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream-the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path.
Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, "What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power." But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector.
Yet any time you and I question the schemes of the do-gooders, we're denounced as being opposed to their humanitarian goals. It seems impossible to legitimately debate their solutions with the assumption that all of us share the desire to help the less fortunate. They tell us we're always "against," never "for" anything.
We are for a provision that destitution should not follow unemployment by reason of old age, and to that end we have accepted Social Security as a step toward meeting the problem. However, we are against those entrusted with this program when they practice deception regarding its fiscal shortcomings, when they charge that any criticism of the program means that we want to end payments....
We are for aiding our allies by sharing our material blessings with nations which share our fundamental beliefs, but we are against doling out money government to government, creating bureaucracy, if not socialism, all over the world.
We need true tax reform that will at least make a start toward restoring for our children the American Dream that wealth is denied to no one, that each individual has the right to fly as high as his strength and ability will take him.... But we can not have such reform while our tax policy is engineered by people who view the tax as a means of achieving changes in our social structure....
The words in this speech are as relevant today as they were in 1964. We still face the issues of Social Security, of tax reform, of revamping our foreign policy, and of balancing the roles of the public and private sectors. Ron Paul believes, has consistently fought for, and now campaigns on these ideals. For that reason, he has my vote. Not because he’d make a perfect president - even Lincoln and Kennedy were far from perfect - but because he has a plan. His plan encompasses and outdoes those of every other candidate, and he doesn’t need to tear down his fellow candidates to sell his plan. It is simple, yet entirely feasible. I am going to register to vote as soon as I get back to New York, and I will keep my readers updated on the election as new developments unfold.
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