Ron Paul's America

What happened to it? Article by William Huff.
LewRockwell.com
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The Libertarian Party's Response to the State of the Union Address

The following is a response by Libertarian Party National Chairman William Redpath

Washington, D.C. - Following President Bush's annual State of the Union Address, the Libertarian Party issued their response from National Chairman William Redpath:

Tonight's State of the Union address went much as expected. Instead of calling for a more limited role of the federal government in American society, the President laid out plans that would only increase the government's intervention into the realm of economics, health care, education and foreign policy. It is unfortunate to see that after seven years of increasing the size of government and increasing the government's presence in the day to day lives of all Americans, the President refuses to limit the scope of the federal government, a once championed virtue of the President's party. The President's last State of the Union address encapsulated his legacy of an abandonment of the principles of limited government and individual freedom.

While the Libertarian Party applauds the President on taking a stand against wasteful government spending--though his administration has been a large contributor to this problem--and opening up more foreign markets to trade, we offer the following solutions to issues the President brought up in his address:

Economics: The President's economic stimulus plan is based on a flawed and outdated economic premise. The best solution to an economic slowdown is increasing the ability for businesses to grow and reinvest in the economy. Instead of increasing the federal deficit by $150 billion dollars, the federal government should focus its energy on eliminating taxes that restrain economic growth. Eliminating taxes such as the death tax and capital gains taxes, and lowering income tax rates on private citizens, will free up vital capital that can be reinvested into the economy. Additionally, the federal government should remove all trade barriers that prevent free trade with other nations. This is a more sound economic policy that presents real solutions instead of the window-dressing that is the President's stimulus package.

Education: The President's 'No Child Left Behind Act' has failed from the very beginning, and its reauthorization would be a travesty to the American education system. Instead of unfunded, federal mandates with the intent of fixing our failing public schools, alternatives involving the private sector should be explored. Increased local control over public schools and the increased use of private alternatives will increase the quality of education for all American children. We call for abolishing the Department of Education and removing the federal government from educating our children.

Health care: Far too long have our politicians tried to find a government fix for the health care problem we have in America. Government interference in the health care system is the root of the problems we face. Only in eliminating government subsidies of health care will we find relief from increasing costs. The Libertarian Party calls for the elimination of all government entitlement programs related to health care.

Foreign Policy: America will spend more than $1 trillion dollars in foreign wars started during the Bush administration. Because of such, the economy is in jeopardy and America's reputation abroad has suffered traumatic blows. On top of this, Americans have seen their civil liberties violated time after time. The Libertarian Party calls for a withdrawal from Iraq following the proper lines of withdrawal, executed by our commanders on the ground. We also call for an abandonment of the reckless policy of pre-emptive war, and a restoration of civil liberties lost under such laws as the Patriot Act and the amendments to FISA. The Libertarian Party reminds our leaders in power of the great words of Samuel Adams:

The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men.

In this perilous time, when our freedom is attacked from both inside our borders by corrupt politicians and from outside by foreign aggressors, we call for prudence, wisdom and above all, an adherence to the United States Constitution, which reigns sovereign over all individuals of American society.

Redpath is a resident of Leesburg, Virginia, where he lives with his wife Melinda. Redpath has served as the Chairman of the Libertarian Party since 2006. He holds an MBA from the University of Chicago.

The Libertarian Party is America's third largest political party, founded in 1971 as an alternative to the two main political parties. You can find more information on the Libertarian Party by visiting www.lp.org. The Libertarian Party proudly stands for smaller government, lower taxes and more freedom.

American Liberty Teetering on Edge of Abyss

by Paul Craig Roberts
LewRockwell.com
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35 Years of Pro-Life Marches Showcase that GOP is Anti-Life

Boulder, CO -- Thirty-five years after the infamous Roe vs. Wade decision, and 40+ million abortions later, the slaughter of innocents continues and pro-lifers rightly continue to march in protest in Washington. Rarely mentioned, though, is that the ongoing holocaust showcases the abject failure of "pro-life" Republican leaders to use legislative remedies easily available to them. The Supreme Court has affirmed that the means to end abortion exists, but this has not been used. Hence, the Republican Party is truly not pro-life.

In 1973, Justice Harry Blackmun wrote in article IX of the majority decision, "The appellee and certain amici argue that the fetus is a 'person' within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. In support of this, they outline at length and in detail the well known facts of fetal development. If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant's case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment."

Section 5 of the 14th amendment gives Congress the enforcement power over the amendment's provisions. The Right To Life Act, which the America First Party supports, was simple legislation that defined "person" in the amendment to apply to the unborn from conception onward. According to Justice Blackmun, this would have been the beginning of the end of abortion in America, but at the peak of GOP power only about 25% of House members supported it, and shamefully, it frequently had no Senatorial sponsor.

"Sadly, after decades of pro-life support for the Republican Party, we have made virtually no progress in stopping abortion," said AFP Chairman Jonathan Hill. "And the recent Partial-Birth Abortion decision, trumpeted by some as a pro-life victory, reaffirmed the disastrous pro-abortion Casey precedent, and indicated that only two of the nine justices hold that there is no constitutional basis for so-called abortion rights. All this shows that the pro-life political strategy has been a disaster, and even more so because the pro-life community seems oblivious to it."

AFP Secretary John Pittman Hey also said, "The pro-life community has made too many compromises in a vain effort to grasp political power. As a result, we are falling short of the critically important goal of stopping abortion. We need to build a new party now."


America First Party
1630 A 30th Street #111
Boulder, Colorado 80301
http://www.AmericaFirstParty.org

7-year plan: U.S. 'to join Europe'

Rules, regs to be integrated without congressional review
By Jerome R. Corsi
WorldNetDaily.com
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White House: Public 'threatened' by private-firearms ownership

Government argues gun restrictions 'permitted by the 2nd Amendment'
WorldNetDaily.com
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Big Brother to control thermostats in homes?

Proposed mandate would grant utility companies unlimited remote access to regulate temperatures
By Chelsea Schilling
WorldNetDaily.com
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Mother warns community about 'Nazi' home invasion

Officers told her 'rights' were 'only in the movies'
By Bob Unruh
WorldNetDaily.com
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They Hate The Messenger

One of the most striking things that I have noticed, in posting on the internet in support of the Presidential campaign for Congressman Ron Paul, is the unreasoned vitriol in many of the responses from Dr. Paul's foes. I say unreasoned, because these sneer and hurl abuse, but never openly confront his arguments on the crucial issues of the day. Of course, it is an ancient metaphor, "don't kill the messenger"--don't kill the man who brings the news you do not want to hear. It is a more forceful way of saying "do not hide your head in the sand like an ostrich."

But the psychological dynamics involved; the intense hatred for being forced to face unpleasant truth; the need to silence the one who would make you think--to reason--possibly to abandon error;--these are things we need to look at more closely. Why? Because some of those caught up in that pathology control much of our mass media; hold positions of high office in the land; have an inordinate influence in education, and in popular writing.

The fact is that when Dr. Paul speaks about the causes of inflation--the enormous Federal deficits, monetized by the Federal Reserve and by printing money and issuing credit, with no actual backing--he is stating the facts--the economic reality, that is only just beginning to bite us once again. If history is any guide, the real crisis from too many dollars in relation to the things those dollars can buy, lies ahead. Jimmy Carter experienced the real effects of the Lyndon Johnson inflation, a decade after Johnson left Office. But those who hate unpleasant truth, once again sneer at the messenger.

The fact is that when Dr. Paul says that Congress and the President have been ignoring our written Constitution, he speaks the simple truth. Anyone who has read and understood the document, knows that he speaks the truth. But those who do not want to have their power restricted--those who claim to believe in the "Rule of Law," but seek to redefine the Law to suit their purposes--sneer in derision, much as the Courtiers in Andersen's classic, fawned over the "Emperor's New Clothes." Of course, if the Office Holders, including "Activist" Judges, may simply redefine reality; may simply change the Law to serve their personal wish lists, we have not the "Rule of Law," but the Rule of Men, the very thing the Constitution was intended to prevent.

The fact is that when Dr. Paul says that it is not our function to change the cultures of other people; that our interventions into the lives of other people is what fuels the ability of Al Qaida to recruit candidates willing to shed their own blood to injure us, he speaks the simple, obvious truth. And how those who support an internationalist compulsion to pretend that all peoples are interchangeable, hate Dr. Paul for being the bearer of that truth; how they ridicule him for daring to question what the drama queens have defined as the defining issue of the 21st Century. Yet neither the Constitution, all have sworn to uphold, nor human history and experience, offer any support, whatsoever, to those drama queens.

The very notion of our waging preemptive war to spread human freedom--at the heart of our present Quixotic foreign policy--is the ultimate oxymoron. Consider, if you will the very concept of freedom. It means different things to different folk. Even taking the aspect, under the more general and confused umbrella of "freedom", which the President used in six different and conflicting senses in his Second Inaugural Address; even limiting our discussion to what we call "liberty," in America, it cannot be applied to any people from outside. It was not so applied here; nor has it--properly understood--been so applied anywhere.

The concept of liberty must come from within. The reason is not hard to grasp. Every people have their own priorities; their own understanding of what is important; their own ideas of how to obtain what to them is most important. To seek to redefine another people's culture, is the inherent, absolute, contradiction of liberty. Those who would inflict our values on others, who would seek not to be a good example, but to force change on others, are not engaged in altruism, but something far closer to what Don Quixote hoped to accomplish, tilting at windmills. The fact that our Neo-Cons have an army of would-be Sancho Panzas in the media, propagandizing America with slogans and half-truths, does not make their absurdity more valid. Nor should it make it more palatable.

But, oh how they vent their hatred on Dr. Paul.

As for you and me? We have our work cut out for us! Dr. Paul's message goes to the survival of America, as the land of the free and the home of the brave. It goes to the solvency of our grandchildren. It goes to all that is honorable and decent in the, presently interrupted, upward progress of Western Man. God willing, we will rise to the task!

William Flax
Attorney At Law
Cincinnati, Ohio
krtq73aa@prodigy.net
http://pages.prodigy.net/krtq73aa/Paul3.htm {Response To Some Common Issues}

Ron Paul, Fox News, and the Conservative Life of the Lie

by Jacob G. Hornberger
Future of Freedom Foundation
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Federal Department of Toilets & Light Bulbs

By Chuck Muth

How many congressmen does it take to change a light bulb? 400.

That's how many members of Congress recently voted for a bill which will force American consumers to change the 50-cent incandescent light bulbs they're currently using and replace them with expensive new, $3 "energy-efficient" light bulbs. As Shane Cory of the Libertarian Party sarcastically put it, "If you outlaw light bulbs, then only outlaws will have light bulbs."

The ban, which takes effect in 2014, was included in the 2007 energy bill which 314 members of the United States House of Representatives and 86 members of the United States Senate voted for.

Following the vote, Nevada Sen. Harry Reid said he thought the light bulb ban was an appropriate exercise of federal power. Interesting company he's keeping. Because when the bill was originally introduced by Rep. Jane Harman (D-Ca.) last March, CNS News reported that two other countries had already taken similar steps to eradicate inexpensive incandescent light bulbs from the planet: Fidel Castro's Cuba and Hugo Chavez's Venezuela.

Unfortunately, this is nothing new for Congress. The light bulb ban is simply the latest example of an increasingly intrusive federal government sticking its nose in the day-to-day affairs of the average citizen.

Do you remember the 1992 energy bill, in which Congress banned the 3.5 gallon toilet, mandating that Americans no longer use more than 1.6 gallons per flush? Of course, per the immutable law of unintended consequences, 1.6 gallons turned out not to be enough to, er, get the job done. So folks found themselves flushing two and three times per visit, thus using the same amount of water, if not more, than they did before Congress butted into our bathrooms.

Excuse me, but would someone please show me where a federal Department of Toilets and Light Bulbs is authorized in the United States Constitution.

And make no mistake. Congress has no intention of stopping at toilets and light bulbs. Still under active consideration is a new federal ban on top-loading washing machines, as well as a federal ban on disposable diapers. Seems some of our elected officials won't be satisfied until we're again washing out our cloth diapers on rocks by a steam in the pitch dark.

The late, great Sen. Barry Goldwater famously declared in the early 1960s he would "not attempt to discover whether legislation is 'needed' before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible." That sentiment has all but disappeared these days in the halls of Congress.

One glaring exception is Arizona Rep. John Shadegg (R-Arizona), a co-founder of the Goldwater Institute, who has proposed the "Enumerated Powers Act" would require that "Each act of Congress shall contain a concise and definite statement of the Constitutional authority relied upon for the enactment of each portion of that act." Now there's an idea whose time has come!

Rep. Shadegg has introduced this bill in every Congress since 1995. And to give you an idea of exactly how far from their strictly limited-government roots the House has drifted since then, Shadegg's original bill in 1995 had 103 co-sponsors. The same bill this year? Just 38.

Goodnight, Constitution. I'll leave a non-incandescent light on for you.

www.muthstruths.com

D.C.: 2nd Amendment does not apply here

By MATTHEW BARAKAT
The Associated Press
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Police in thought pursuit

"Denuded of euphemisms and code words, the Act aims to identify and stigmatize persons and groups who hold thoughts the government decrees correlate with homegrown terrorism, for example, opposition to the Patriot Act or the suspension of the Great Writ of habeas corpus."
By Bruce Fein
Washington Times
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