John

Re: "Ron Paul is in good company when he says an interventionist foreign policy makes enemies and provokes danger to ourselves. It's time we stopped confusing defense with policing the world."

Actually, Ron Paul is in very bad company. He is of the anarcho-capitalist school of thought and hails from the libertarian anarchist wing, the voluntaryists.

THAT is not the same company as our Founders but that of people like Lew Rockwell, Murray Rothbard, etc.

Sorry, real free enterprise as Adam Smith and the Founders understood it, means FREE choice, free exchange, etc. THAT does not take place when your dictator is being supplied by an evil superpower and feels free to choose anyone's wife as his own and run the husband through a wood chipper.

Not only do reasonable human beings recognize the right of self defense, they recognize helping someone who cannot defend themselves.

Every citizen has that right, and its a justifiable use of force, quite unlike the naive and cruel an-cap "Law of non aggression."

Geez!

“In this video, using Ron Paul's own words from his books and interviews, it is shown that Ron Paul's goal is voluntaryism. He adopts limited-government positions and appeals to the U.S. Constitution as part of a long-term strategy for achieving a completely free society, absent any State.” --Graham Wright, Ron Paul is a Voluntaryist.

"There is a natural and necessary progression from the extreme of anarchy to the extreme of tyranny; and that arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of Liberty abused to licentiousness." -- George Washington Maxims

Ron Paul achieved nothing in his carrer in the House. None of his bills got passed, save for one of pork for some statue or the like. What a waste. He lost, that is last place, in Florida yesterday, but he muddles on in a waste of time campaign that will go nowhere with those that realize we are in the world as a superpower, and can't just pack up and go home. We are also at war with a governmental system that seeks our demise. Ron Paul is a delusional old man, who should be enjoying a retirement, not wasting time and money preaching isolationism and anarchy.

wjmccrindle

Funny, the same folks that complain about "policing" the world, aren't too hot about policing the home front either.

Funny how that works.

I seem to remember some guy by the name of George saying "Beware of Foreign Entanglements. The reason only one of Ron Paul's bills got passed is because the crooks and/or mental midgets don't believe in and/or don't follow the the Constitution. Want to see one of the mental midgets sweat, ask him to name 5 bills he voted for that are Constitutional by citing the section of the Constitution that authorizes them. You will get one of two responses, a blank open mouth stare or "that is a stupid question."

Howard Last

Re: "I seem to remember some guy by the name of George saying "Beware of Foreign Entanglements."

One real difficulty in reading only an-cap literature is that they have selected quotations to make it look like they are in line with the Founders when they are far from it...simple eisegesis.

If you read the Federalist Papers and the other writings of the Founders, you will find that what you quoted is hardly all they said, or even in the spirit of that quotation as they said it.

For example....Madison, the Architect of the Constitution said this:

"It is a principle incorporated into the settled policy of America, that as peace is better than war, war is better than tribute." --James Madison, letter to the Dey of Algiers, 1816.

George Washington, wound up paying tribute to the Barbary Pirates because he had no navy to protect our interests / shipping OVER SEAS, and said this:

"Would to Heaven we had a navy to reform those enemies to mankind, or crush them into non-existence."

Jefferson, did just that. He got a navy. He invaded Tripoli, rescued hostages, took ground and cities.

So, the idea of foreign entanglements was Not to ignore our interests over seas until they landed on our shores, but to be free to do so without an entangling treaty.

That is hardly what Paul suggests.

BTW: did you like Ron's being 1 of only 4 Republican reps to request earmarks during the voluntary moratorium because the people demanded it?

Yep, $157M request for earmarks in 2011 and nearly $400M in requests in 2010.

Now, the point of all this is that Ron Paul is a voluntaryist and anarcho capitalist which is as far from the Founders as East is from West.

He has been outed by his friends at the Mises Institute, and he admits it. He quotes from Rothbard more than he ever does the Founders...

Either you know that and are hiding what he is, claiming he is "Mr Constitution" or you don't and the anarchist bomb has just been dropped on you.

So, you have a decision to make: Ron Paul and the voluntaryists, or the Founders and the Constitution...they are in opposite directions.

And no, there is no such thing as a "law and order anarchist."

God bless

"How strangely will the Tools of a Tyrant pervert the plain Meaning of Words!" --Samuel Adams, Father of the American Revolution. Letter to John Pitts (21 January 1776)

@Sapient

You're pretty free with labels (voluntaryist, anarcho capitalist)... which establishes nothing and contributes nothing to understanding Ron Paul or his proposed policies.

Paraphrasing Jefferson, we are friends of liberty everywhere, but guardians(custodians) only of our own. That statement is also attributed to John Quincy Adams (as Sec of State). Jefferson also stated the idea that we're are for trade and friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none. That is the policy on non-interventionism in a nutshell and that IS what Ron Paul advocates.

Yes, after independence from Britain, suddenly our merchant ships were left without guards and were preyed upon by the Barbary pirates. After Jefferson's action, the Barbary pirates resumed attacks on American ships prior and during the conflict with UK known as the War of 1812.

It was actually Madison's attacks in the 2nd Barbary War that convinced the thugs in Tripoli to leave American ships alone -- and that we would no longer pay "tribute" protection money. No, we didn't convert them to a democracy nor did we occupy their countries, we showed them retaliation was certain, that we were willing and able.

Obviously, world wide trade requires a navy to defend our merchant interests. The question remains open on how to fund that. SHOULD every citizen help pay to defend shipping merchants? OR should they pay for that protection and pass that cost on to their customers?

I disagree that Ron Paul differs from the Founders on this policy. Paul believes in a strong defense, second to none, but only for DEFENSE of our shores and interests, not in occupation, policing the conflicts of others and empire building. We don't need troops at 900 bases in 140 countries. We do need a certain number of ports for our navies. Our navy currently has more firepower than the next 13 navies combined, so it's reasonable to argue that we do NOT need a yet larger navy.

That is all Paul is saying, we can spend a lot less and still have the largest military in the world that no sane nation would challenge and that no nation period could defeat.

Paul is NOT an anarchist. He is for the Rule of Law and obedience to the Constitution. Big Difference. Government is the opposite of Liberty; Paul is simply for more of the latter and less of the former.

Sound monetary policy makes sense. I don't care if he quotes Rothbard or Mises, that doesn't an anarchist make.

Just so I know who I am addressing, did you accidentally use my "name" or what?

Three words, Gentlemen.

We.

Are.

Broke.

Actually, we'd have to come up with around $15,000,000,000,000 to get back to the point where we are broke.

Howard (I assume it was Howard who accidentally used the pseudonym of the person he was responding to) is correct. The U.S. Navy is as powerful as the next 13 most powerful navies COMBINED, and only two of those are even potential long-term threats, and both lots of have crappy equipment. The bottom line is that the U.S. Navy and the Royal Navy could send every other navy to the bottom of the sea by this time tomorrow.

Policing the world ... policing the world ... policing the world.

That's all you see in our military.

If you took a little time to get to know what it is your military does, you see it goes FAR beyond "policing."

The U.S. military, in the form of Navy and Marines, have been the first responders with an appreciable amount of material, knowledge, and desire to respond to almost every natural or man-made disaster that has occurred anywhere in the world since about the end of WWII.

In his 20 year Naval career by brother dug children and bodies out of mud slides in the Philippines, Mexico, and Chili at least a half dozen times. He was aboard one of the first ships to respond to the Indonesian tsunami, has rescued victims of two ferry disasters, and responded to no less than seven severe earthquakes and typhoons.

Fleet ships have the ability to land against an enemy, build a small community complete with hospitals, clothing distributions points and feeding facilities in a matter of hours, and with the support of the Army and Air Forces keep them in operation for months, years if necessary.

There are only a handful of nations on this planet who have the capability to do that. How many have stood up? Many of them don't even care for their own people.

War is only one of the jobs (responsibilities) of our military and we should all thank whatever God we know that, since the end of WWII, YOUR military has saved thousands of lives more than it has taken.

Stossel, sometimes you make a lot of sense and I've found myself rooting for you against O'Reilly, but on this subject you should be ashamed of your lack of subject knowledge.

USMC Vietnam.