On Cavuto:
December 21, 2012
WorldNetDaily Names Ron Paul 'Man of the Decade'
Honoring one of the most inspiring and principled political careers in contemporary American politics, culminating in an extraordinary “farewell address” upon his recent announced retirement from the House of Representatives, WND has named U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, as its “Man of the Decade.”
This is surprising, coming from a site founded and run by a man who once wrote:
Ron Paul seems clueless on [foreign policy]. He seems to think radical Islamists will just leave us alone if we leave them alone. That hasn’t been true for 230 years of American history. And it hasn’t been true for Western civilization for the last 1,300 years…Santorum has a clear-headed view on this subject…
Is it significant? Definitely. This is a big conservative site directing a lot of positive attention on a man who routinely calls for a noninterventionist foreign policy, an end to the drug war, and defends the legitimacy of secession.
On the other hand, it’s easier to say nice things about someone when he is not running for president and is on the verge of retiring* from public life. I am sure that many conservatives think that, with the old man leaving the picture, the Ron Paul movement can be tamed and turned into a loyal wing of the traditional Republican Party. Hopefully that’s not the case.
*Of course, Paul apparently has big plans for his future outside of Congress. Lew Rockwell tells us to ”watch for news of his institutionalized work for peace, his homeschooling curriculum, his homepage, and his TV network. Far from retiring, Ron Paul is stepping up his work for liberty.”
November 18, 2012
Ron Paul to Spend More Time on College Campuses
According to The Hill, Paul says, “I’m excited about spending more time on college campuses, not less. College campuses will still be on my agenda. That’s where the action is…The young people don’t like the debt they are inheriting, the violation of their civil liberties. They don’t like the war and it’s a fertile field. The people up here sort of ignore them.”
November 15, 2012
Ron Paul's Farewell Speech
This may well be the last time I speak on the House Floor. At the end of the year I’ll leave Congress after 23 years in office over a 36-year period. My goals in 1976 were the same as they are today: promote peace and prosperity by a strict adherence to the principles of individual liberty.
It was my opinion, that the course the U.S. embarked on in the latter part of the 20th Century would bring us a major financial crisis and engulf us in a foreign policy that would overextend us and undermine our national security.
To achieve the goals I sought, government would have had to shrink in size and scope, reduce spending, change the monetary system, and reject the unsustainable costs of policing the world and expanding the American Empire.
The problems seemed to be overwhelming and impossible to solve, yet from my view point, just following the constraints placed on the federal government by the Constitution would have been a good place to start.
November 8, 2012
Ron Paul: Election Shows U.S. “Far Gone”
Excerpts: “We’re so far gone. We’re over the cliff…People do not want anything cut. They want all the bailouts to come. They want the Fed to keep printing the money. And they don’t believe that we’ve gone off the cliff or are close to going off the cliff. They think we can patch it over, that we can somehow come up with some magic solution. But you can’t have a budgetary solution if you don’t change what the role of government should be. As long as you think we have to police the world and run this welfare state, all we are going to argue about is who will get the loot.”
September 20, 2012
What Should Freedom Lovers Do?
According to Lew Rockwell, the libertarian movement needs “more professors, business owners, fathers and mothers, religious leaders, and entrepreneurs. The party of liberty loves commerce and culture, not the state. Commerce and culture is our home and our launching ground for social reform and revolution.”
He doesn’t hesitate to add, however, “We need more Ron Pauls.”
September 13, 2012
Tom Woods on Jesse Benton
Jesse Benton is going to take over the reelection campaign of Mitch McConnell in 2014. And to think, legions of Ron Paul supporters donated thousands of dollars to the Ron Paul campaign so that this guy could pull down a six-figure salary. Tom Woods reacts:
Gee, now why did those incorrigible naysayers have so many unkind words for him?
People who said Benton was positioning himself all along for bigger things in the GOP were scoffed at. Why, Jesse has a secret plan to get Ron Paul the nomination at the last minute!
Well, now we know the real secret plan.
Ask yourself this: how much money would you have to be paid to work for an enemy of the things you’re supposed to stand for? Maybe now people will understand why Jesse would fly into a tirade after some of Ron’s most heroic moments, when the rest of us were cheering.
I could go through a lengthy catalogue of problems with Benton. The grassroots folks already know a lot of them, so there’s probably no need. What’s done is done.
August 26, 2012
Ron Paul, Jesse Benton, and the Republican National Convention
The Republicans won’t let Ron Paul speak at Romney’s coronation because the good doctor won’t endorse the Keynesian warmonger. The New York Times reports:
Mr. Paul, in an interview, said convention planners had offered him an opportunity to speak under two conditions: that he deliver remarks vetted by the Romney campaign, and that he give a full-fledged endorsement of Mr. Romney. He declined.
“It wouldn’t be my speech,” Mr. Paul said. “That would undo everything I’ve done in the last 30 years. I don’t fully endorse him for president.”
Jesse Benton is also quoted in the article and, unsurprisingly, pitches the pro-sellout argument:
Some true believers want to “dress in black, stand on a hill and say, ‘Smash the state,’ ” said Mr. Benton, who is married to one of Mr. Paul’s granddaughters. But “it’s not our desire to have floor demonstrations. That would cost us a lot more than it would get us.”
The exact same charge–with the exact same words–has been leveled at Lew Rockwell by members of the Beltway crowd. But it’s been Lew Rockwell, Tom Woods, and the scholars and writers associated with LRC and the Mises Institute who have been the driving intellectual force behind the Ron Paul Revolution. The movement is animated by radical Rothbardian ideas like ending the Fed and bringing the troops home, not by wonky Beltway ideas like setting up school vouchers, selling off highways to private corporations, and demunicipalizing trash collection.
Benton continues:
Just eight years ago, “it was fringy people in the John Birch Society” who were espousing Mr. Paul’s ideas for taking on the Federal Reserve system, Mr. Benton said. “Now it’s the Republican Party” that has drafted a platform plank calling for auditing the central bank.
“Fringy” people built this movement, and since these “fringe” types have been successful, the Republicans are trying to co-opt their work. Benton may want to downplay it, but the title of his boss’s work on the central bank is End the Fed, not Conduct a Half-Assed Audit of the Fed like the Republican platform calls for.
I’ll stay on the hill, Jesse, and we’ll see how begging for scraps from the Republican establishment’s table works out for you.
