We do not live in a truly free country. In a free country, there would be a free market, not government regulation of business; parents could educate their children as they saw fit instead of sending them to a failing public school system; privacy would not be invaded by atrocities like the Patriot Act; taxation would not exist because every person would be in control of the money he earned; the military would strictly be used for national defense because foreign alliances would not be tolerated; social issues like gay marriage and abortion would not exist because individual rights would reign supreme; immigrants would receive no handouts and would either sink or swim like all other citizens. None of these are true in the United States. I cannot understand how our society so willingly relinquishes freedom in exchange for a false sense of security. Thomas Jefferson said, "When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty." I stand for liberty.
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Ron Paul: Mutually Assured Destruction vs Mutually Assured Respect
Two problems: (1) most Americans have no problem with “unilateral American dominance,” and (2) part of changing our foreign policy and moving toward peaceful interaction with other nations involves apologizing for our misdeeds and extending a hand to those we have wronged, but, unfortunately, Americans have bought — hook, line, and sinker — into this asinine notion that we should “never apologize for America.”
“It is vain to fight totalitarianism by adopting totalitarian methods. Freedom can only be won by men unconditionally committed to the principles of freedom. The first requisite for a better social order is the return to unrestricted freedom of thought and speech.”
“How can the general welfare be promoted by taxing the whole community, to make up the losses of any individual who chooses to employ his time and money in a losing concern? … How; can the community be benefited by paying a manufacturer a bounty at my expense, taken out of my pocket, not for my benefit but for his? … But ignorant and selfish legislators have gradually assumed this power, under pretence of promoting the general welfare: a pretence that would equally justify transferring the young wife of an elderly man to a younger man, as transferring the money of A into the pocket of B, without a satisfactory equivalent.
Where will you limit the all‐devouring pretence of the general welfare? Napoleon Buonaparte pretended it was for the general welfare of the French nation that he should repudiate Josephine and take to wife Maria Louisa. I suppose it was for the general welfare that Caligula appointed his horse to the consulship… I know of no pretence, no motive that can be set up, so Well calculated to cover and protect every possible fraud on the peopleʹs rights, as the General Welfare. It has no limitation: it extends to all things, to all times, persons, places, and proposals. There is no tyranny that it will not authorize.”
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— Thomas Cooper, ‘Lectures on the Elements of Political Economy’, 1826 (via no-belgium-no-problem)
speaks so beautifully and directly to Congress’ persistent abuse of the “general welfare” phrase in Section 8 of Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution
“Aggressive wars, income taxes, national IDs, domestic spying, torture regimes, secret prisons, Federal Reserve manipulation — we don’t have to take it any more.”
Ron Paul is probably the most adorable, peaceful-looking man to ever serve as the face of a revolution. Another loss for Che Guevara (though I’ve lost count on that front).
