I Am Sick Of Ron Paul

Blasphemy? No, hear me out. I believe Ron Paul is a good man and perhaps the only man of principle within a 100-mile radius of the Capitol. He surely is the only candidate for president who 1) understands the Constitution, and 2) wishes to see the Constitution upheld. (The real Constitution, not the Frankenstein's monster hatched by the federal courts, which are mere appendages of the federal government and thus inferior to the Constitution.)

Yet it is exactly because Ron Paul is principled that his presence on Capitol Hill and the campaign trail does more harm than good. He bestows legitimacy on a system gone renegade, and he provides false hope that this renegade can be tamed and reformed. Like a lovestruck adolescent, Ron Paul is demeaning himself and charting a path to ruin. A true man of principle removes himself from the company of swine; he does not remain among them nor cast pearls at their feet.

For those who disagree and maintain that the system can be brought into line with the Constitution, you must lack familiarity with that document and all that the federal government has done to repudiate it. As I wrote on another occasion:

Think for a moment what would have to occur for the federal government to obey the Constitution and restore fiscal sanity. “Mandatory” spending on unconstitutional wealth transfers such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid would have to be eliminated or at least phased out. “Discretionary” spending that legislators love to funnel to their constituents would also have to be deeply slashed, not merely to balance the budget but also to terminate unconstitutional wealth transfers to corporations, universities, farmers, and countless others who lobby furiously for this pork. Congress would have to cease legislating on roughly 70%-80% of the subjects it now arrogates to itself in violation of the Tenth Amendment.

The President would have to stop issuing “executive orders” that carry the force of law despite lacking congressional consent, and he would also have to suspend all war operations until securing a declaration of same from Congress. The Supreme Court would have to disavow precedent from the past three generations that, among other things, enables federal courts to interfere routinely in local matters under the guise of the Fourteenth Amendment; that gives a blank check to congressional and presidential assertions of power under the guise of “interstate commerce” or “spending for the general welfare”; and that has distorted “judicial review” into a power of amending the Constitution rather than enforcing it.

And let us not forget the hordes occupying the bureaucracy, most of whom would have to quit their jobs and halt the printing presses from churning out tens of thousands of unlawful regulations that Congress never voted on.

To put it mildly, this is not going to happen. People from all walks of life have a vested interest in the unconstitutional status quo and will never vote to relinquish it. Welfare recipients, Social Security dependents, federal employees, high-flying banks, both major political parties, mal-educated college graduates, and the indolent majority will never budge. We could hold elections from now until doomsday without seeing reform that comes anywhere near to accomplishing what the Constitution requires.

Ron Paul knows full well that the federal train has run off the tracks, and for him to persist in believing that it can be brought back displays an astounding level of naïveté and historical ignorance. No government voluntarily surrenders power once acquired, especially not when there is a lapdog judiciary devoted to mythologizing such power as righteous.

Our only hope for survival is for a critical mass of Americans (not the majority, mind you) to wake up and identify the modern federal government as an illegal enterprise. Paul's fervent participation in that illegal enterprise postpones the healthy day of reckoning.