Ron Paul Redefines Liberty His Way

2012-01-08T11:30:00.000-06:00

Ron Paul Redefines Liberty His Way

When I read, I leave room in my mind for the things the author leaves out. Call it an incredulity factor or, perhaps, a Missouri factor -- Show me. I got to be shown!

For example, in a work of fiction, say, a murder mystery, I can forgive you for leaving out the actual gruesome details of how the victim dies. But if the murderer turns out to be a character that has not been introduced until the end, well, that is unforgivable.

I approach non-fiction books, and, in particular, political or philosophical writings, with a similar scrutiny -- times a hundred. I leave a large space in my mind so I can discover important fundamentals the author has left out. If the omissions render the thesis of the book untenable, then the book fails as a work of non-fiction. And so it is that I find Ron Paul's book, Liberty Defined.

Dr. Paul's writing style is straightforward much like his speaking style. I like that about him. When he speaks, there is the feeling that he is putting all his cards on the table. He does not seem to hold back and measure his comments like almost all other politicians of our age. I found myself agreeing with many of the ideas he expressed:

Who doesn't want to get out of the war in Afghanistan?
Who among us is not against the draft?

Who doesn't know that the CIA is involved in "assassination, regime change, secret rendition, and rigging foreign elections"?

Who doesn't realize, from the day it was introduced, that the Patriot Act causes a serious erosion of our civil liberties, all in the name of security?

You, Ron Paul, and I all realize these things. But do not let that fool you into ignoring the basis for his discontent.

Ron Paul's ideas about the United States Constitution boggle my mind. I became enamored of the document when I was an undergraduate studying political science. I went on to get a law degree mostly because I was fascinated by constitutional law and how it serves as the judicial balance to the legislative and executive branches of our government. Paul, in essence, advocates ignoring the entire judicial history of the United States. He takes his limited interpretation of the Constitution and attempts to force it on the rest of us because it is so clear to him that he is right. His followers are so caught up in his demagoguery they fail to notice the missing pieces of his puzzling conclusion that government is the problem.

In the end, they are guilty of the very thing they say has caused the country's ills -- a flawed interpretation of the Constitution. I may not agree with every U.S. Supreme Court decision but I do understand that it is that Court's job to tell us what the Constitution says. This has been true since 1803 in the case Marbury vs. Madison. I suppose Dr. Paul wants to overturn that one.

His views on integration speak for themselves. When he writes, "the result [of affirmative action and integration] is that undeserving recipients demand financial benefits for something they did not suffer from people who had nothing to do with the injustice," my mind implodes from the vacuum he leaves in history and the solutions he leaves out. If you put a people in slavery for 400 years or you give another group any form of power over them, there is residual guilt or burden from those dynamics which cannot be overcome in a mere 48 years. Dr. Paul would even undo the Civil Rights Act of 1964, our attempt at a solution to the scourge of slavery and its aftermath.

He, as do all people who long for the "good old days" (which invariably seem to be the early 1950s pre- Brown vs. the Board of Education), thinks that the complexities of society can be assuaged and made perfect by leaving markets and people totally to their own devices. Progressive laws be damned! Dr. Paul's laissez faire attitude about how society should work is all theory and no practicality. Ron Paul would probably have been against the Magna Carta.

"Liberty," Paul writes, "means to exercise human rights in any manner a person chooses so long as it does not interfere with the exercise of the rights of others." But instead of recognizing the nuances of his definition, he then writes that this liberty "means, above all else, keeping government out of our lives."

With this incredible assertion, Dr. Paul earns four "I Got Mine" badges*. He is blinded by the bright light of his own privilege. Determining when a person's exercise of rights interferes with another's is at the very heart of our Bill of Rights, an essential part of the Constitution. Most squabbles among people do not rise to the level of "rights," but in 1787, the United States of America adopted a Constitution, the first of its type in the history of the world, to sort these issues out. And we have done this sorting as a nation since then, sometimes brilliantly and sometimes dreadfully. The Texas congressman's flawed radicalism makes me appreciate our form of government with a new vigor.

I am fascinated by Ron Paul's popularity and I actually enjoy the attitude if not the content of his unfiltered responses at the Republican debates. But Liberty Defined is merely an opinionated diatribe against the U.S. government and even Ron Paul himself admits that his theories sound like they lead to anarchy. Get rid of the Federal Reserve? Reverse 60 years of progress on the country's racial problems? Trim the federal government down to bare bones? Get rid of regulations which keep businesses in check? Get rid of the minimum wage for workers and let business sort it out? Let business take over all the functions that the U.S. government now oversees? In other words, he wants to reverse over 200 years of American history and put it in the hands of business and the free market. He trashes the judicial system, misrepresents the executive branch (of which he desires to be the leader), and I am still unclear about what role he thinks the Congress should play.

The U.S. is a constitutional democracy, full of different ideas, hopes, and dreams by a wide range of individuals. Ron Paul wants to throw this precious baby out with what he sees as dirty bathwater. But one man's dirty water could be another's path to freedom.

Peggy Johnson has a Bachelor of Arts in political science from the University of Central Oklahoma and a Juris Doctor from the University of Oklahoma. She was a journalist in the United States Navy. She currently resides in Oklahoma City where she is a musician, writer, and courier of letters.

*With this article, I am introducing the "I Got Mine Badge." A politician or, indeed, any person, can win up to four of these badges by:

(1.) ignoring that racial or financial privileges played a factor in the successes he or she might enjoy , or

(2.) ignoring history to determine that civil rights laws are an unnecessary burden on our society.

The Politics of Now

Ron Paul Redefines Liberty His Way