Flada Blog

After three debates, I think it’s safe to say that most everyone paying attention knows Dr. Ron Paul’s (correct) view on military action and foreign policy.

Unfortunately, in Republican primaries this is probably not a winning issue despite the fact that Dr. Paul is on the right side of the issue. Although his foreign policy ideas gain him broad support from libertarians and liberals alike, they won’t help him win the Republican nomination. I hope I’m wrong, but I doubt that I am. I’m not suggesting that he should downplay his anti-preemption, anti-nation-building stance because he’s correct. It’s just that in the best case he’ll end up not winning the nomination and be nominated by the Libertarian Party or the Constitution Party (which both have already endorsed him).

Under that scenario, he could end up with a lot of support from people who are disenfranchised by both major parties, and might even be the top third-party vote-earner in recent history, yet still lose the general election by a wide margin.

In any case, I would love to see Dr. Paul focus more in these debates on the thing that really sets him apart from every other candidate–his limited, Constitutional government ideals. With the ever growing, nanny-statism, it soon won’t matter what we do overseas and we’ll have less and less say over those things anyway.

In a time when normal search warrants are treated as no-knock warrants (which shouldn’t exist in the first place) and innocent people are murdered by the police who break into their homes, guns are seized by government officials, individuals need permits to exercise their First Amendment rights, and the Ninth and Tenth Amendments have become distant memories; the United States has become a country I no longer even recognize. These erosions have been created by McCains, Giulianis, Thompsons, Clintons, Obamas, Edwardses, etc; with one lone voice standing up as often as possible on the House floor effectively saying, “Hold on, we don’t have the Constitutional authority to do this.”

Libertarians and Ron Paul are our last hopes for a bloodless return to civil liberty right here at home. Although Kathryn Johnston, Randy Weaver and his family, the Branch Davidians, and countless others may question my use of the term “bloodless” (if they could)–but I digress.