Ron Paul and the Founders' Vision of America

The website title of the American Libertarian Party is, “The Party of Minimum Government, Maximum Freedom.” Strangely enough, the hero of the Libertarian Party is Texas Congressman Ron Paul, who is not running for president as a Libertarian but as a Republican.

Wikipedia defines Libertarianism as “the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society….Libertarianism includes diverse beliefs, all advocating strict limits to government activity and sharing the goal of maximizing individual liberty and political freedom.”

During the 18th century Age of Enlightenment, "liberal" ideas flourished in Europe and America; they challenged monarchy and state churches and emphasized reason, science, individual liberty, free markets, consent of the governed and limited government.

In his book, The Roots of Modern Libertarian Ideas, Brian Doherty, a libertarian journalist who has appeared on CNN and Fox News, explains that “…the libertarian vision is in the Declaration of Independence: we are all created equal; no one ought to have any special rights and privileges in his social relations with other people. We have certain rights—to our life, to our freedom, to do what we please in order to find happiness. Government has just one purpose: to help us protect those rights. And if it doesn’t, then we get to “alter or abolish it.”

Doherty goes on to say, “It’s hard to imagine a more libertarian document, but there it is, the Constitution: a sacred founding document of the United States of America. Libertarians…clearly understood that state power is forever trying to overwhelm political liberty and that they needed to be diligent in its defense.…American revolutionaries were, as the Declaration of Independence states, fighting not just for the historic rights of Englishmen but for the natural rights of all mankind. Americans had, too, a fresh vision of civic virtue. Virtue was no longer, as in classical times, based only in participation in affairs of state. The new virtue…flowed from the citizen’s participation in society, not in government, which the liberal-minded increasingly saw as the principal source of the evils of the world….Commerce, that great emollient of social ills, that creator of wealth and happiness, was breaking free of the old contempt that dogged it. Americans were to enjoy a great commercial republic, a society steeped in libertarian principles.”

Today’s American Libertarian Party is the United State’s third largest political party. Its vision is for a world in which individuals can freely exercise the natural right of sole dominion over their own lives, liberty and property….”

I suppose, dear readers, that you are wondering why I chose today to champion libertarianism, especially since I am a life-long Republican.

It is very simple. Ron Paul was on Meet the Press, the American NBC weekly political program, and as always, when I hear Ron Paul speak, I cannot help but agree with him.

Congressman Paul, at 76, is retiring from Congress but he is making one last effort at the US presidency. His views are clear. He focuses on the right problems (jobs, eliminating useless regulations, cutting way back on government budgets and on the taxes that support them). And, he is willing to discuss the real 2012 issues - not, as he put it, dwelling on who cuts Mitt Romney’s lawn.

I suppose Ron Paul does not have a chance of being elected President, but, as I mentioned a few blogs ago, we ought to be paying attention to him.

And, if we cannot elect Ron Paul, who? That is a mightily entangling question. But, if I had to choose, I would say, Herman Cain or Rick Perry, or maybe the two on the same ticket, running for President and Vice President- you choose who gets which office.

As Ron Paul so eloquently put it this morning, we have real, serious problems to confront. They are destroying our economy and our way of life nad the world. If we don’t act now, it will be too late.

I may be in the minority, but I do not believe that Mitt Romney can beat President Obama. I do not believe that they are very different - both support big government, taxation to solve the debt problem in stead of lowering the government’s budget, and dropping American troops into any dark corner of the world that is experiencing internal political problems.

Perry and, especially Cain, are not of these views. Perhaps with American citizen support they actually could make a difference. Before it’s too late.

Thomas Jefferson understood:

“Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add “within the limits of the law,” because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right of an individual.”