Thomas, about who I would support FULLY, to be honest, I just don't know. There are no candidates that strike me as what we need at this juncture in our history. Whether our enemies are our creation is not as important to me as the fact they exist, for whatever reason.
I admire McCain's courage in standing up for what is necessary as to the war, but his stances on most other issues leaves me cold at best.
The McCain-Feingold Act was a direct attack on my freedom of political speech visa vie the attempted strangulation of my favorite grass-roots organization, the NRA.
Huckabee is intriguing, but I'm far too familiar with the mechanizations of Arkansas politics, having lived there from 1975 to 1990, to find him completely trustworthy.
I may yet decide to vote for Paul, but most likely that would be as an Independent or Third Party as I don’t envision him taking the Republican nomination.
My reasoning for that support of Paul would be my firm belief that if he was elected and withdrew from the world, he personally would be responsible for the increased havoc that inevitably would result, in my view. If we were in a "Fortress America" and that fortress was attacked, I believe he would do what was necessary, because the Constitution would demand it of him.
Personally, I feel that whatever animosity the world may hold for us for our perceived and actual intrusions would pale in comparison to what could develop from our actual and intentional abandonment.
I do have faith in this. That whatever is the final result of the invasion of Iraq, a President in the future will owe a debt of gratitude to Bush for giving them some answers to some critical questions regarding the capabilities of the Muslims to settle their own problems, which by extension will involve us, one way or another. As partners in peace allied against a common enemy or wholly deadly enemies. Anyone who argues that is not an open question at the moment disregards the most important facet of the war on terror.
Who is the enemy, besides the most vocal and animated, and where do they live?
I'm not naive about Ron Paul.
I was a Libertarian!
That is until 9/11/2001 when the Libertarians convinced me that on the issue of national defense, they are no different than Dennis Kucinich.
I agree with Paul's positions on everything else.
For quidance on all things political I look to the only libertarian president the nation has had.
Jefferson!
The following is a short compilation of Jefferson's thoughts.
"I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. Already they have raised up a moneyed aristocracy that has set the government at defiance. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs”
"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."
"The Constitution of most of our states (and of the United States) assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed and that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property, and freedom of press."
"I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet imagined by man by which a government can be held to the principles of it's Constitution."
"The way to have safe government is not to trust it all to the one, but to divide it among the many, distributing to everyone exactly the functions in which he is competent....To let the National Government be entrusted with the defense of the nation, and it's foreign and federal relations..... The State Governments with the Civil Rights, Laws, Police and administration of what concerns the State generally. The Counties with the local concerns, and each ward direct the interests within itself. It is by dividing and subdividing these Republics from the great national one down through all it's subordinations until it ends in the administration of everyman's farm by himself, by placing under everyone what his own eye may superintend, that all will be done for the best."
"We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our selection between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat in our drink, in our necessities and comforts, in our labors and in our amusements, for our callings and our creeds...our people.. must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live.. We have not time to think, no means of calling the mis-managers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow suffers. Our landholders, too...retaining indeed the title and stewardship of estates called theirs, but held really in trust for the treasury, must...be contented with penury, obscurity and exile.. private fortunes are destroyed by public as well as by private extravagance.
This is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of society is reduced to mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering... And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in it's train wretchedness and oppression."
"If the present (Continental) Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise, in a body to which the people send one hundred and fifty lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and talk by the hour?"
Laws that forbid the carrying of arms... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.
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Yet, Jefferson the libertarian recognized a threat when he saw one. The Barbary Pirates sponsored by the Barbary States.
Paying the ransom would only lead to further demands, Jefferson argued in letters to future presidents John Adams, then America's minister to Great Britain, and James Monroe, then a member of Congress. As Jefferson wrote to Adams in a July 11, 1786, letter, "I acknolege [sic] I very early thought it would be best to effect a peace thro' the medium of war." Paying tribute will merely invite more demands, and even if a coalition proves workable, the only solution is a strong navy that can reach the pirates, Jefferson argued in an August 18, 1786, letter to James Monroe: "The states must see the rod; perhaps it must be felt by some one of them. . . . Every national citizen must wish to see an effective instrument of coercion, and should fear to see it on any other element than the water. A naval force can never endanger our liberties, nor occasion bloodshed; a land force would do both."
"From what I learn from the temper of my countrymen and their tenaciousness of their money," Jefferson added in a December 26, 1786, letter to the president of Yale College, Ezra Stiles, "it will be more easy to raise ships and men to fight these pirates into reason, than money to bribe them."
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Why did Jefferson react in this manner?
On March 28, 1786 Jefferson and Adams detailed what they saw as the main issue:
“We took the liberty to make some inquiries concerning the Grounds of their pretensions to make war upon a Nation who had done them no Injury, and observed that we considered all mankind as our Friends who had done us no wrong, nor had given us any provocation. The Ambassador answered us that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in Battle was sure to go to Paradise.”
Thomas Jefferson wanted a military solution, but the blackmailing of the American Republic and enslaving its citizens would continue until the new American nation realized that the only answer to terrorism was force.
When Jefferson became president in 1801 he refused to accede to Tripoli's demands for an immediate payment of $225,000 and an annual payment of $25,000. The pasha of Tripoli then declared war on the United States. Although as secretary of state and vice president he had opposed developing an American navy capable of anything more than coastal defense, President Jefferson dispatched a squadron of naval vessels to the Mediterranean. As he declared in his first annual message to Congress: "To this state of general peace with which we have been blessed, one only exception exists. Tripoli, the least considerable of the Barbary States, had come forward with demands unfounded either in right or in compact, and had permitted itself to denounce war, on our failure to comply before a given day. The style of the demand admitted but one answer. I sent a small squadron of frigates into the Mediterranean. . . ."
The American show of force quickly awed Tunis and Algiers into breaking their alliance with Tripoli. The humiliating loss of the frigate Philadelphia and the capture of her captain and crew in Tripoli in 1803, criticism from his political opponents, and even opposition within his own cabinet did not deter Jefferson from his chosen course during four years of war.
The aggressive action of Commodore Edward Preble (1803-4) forced Morocco out of the fight and his five bombardments of Tripoli restored some order to the Mediterranean.
It was not until the second war with Algiers under Madison, in 1815, that naval victories by Commodores William Bainbridge and Stephen Decatur led to treaties ending all tribute payments by the United States. European nations continued annual payments until the 1830s. However, international piracy in Atlantic and Mediterranean waters declined during this time under pressure from the Euro-American nations, who no longer viewed pirate states as mere annoyances during peacetime and potential allies during war.
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Although I’m tempted to vote for Paul and would support him if not for his stance on Fortress America, a fortress vulnerable to attack on our soil, because he would fail to carry the fight to enemy soil, indeed he doesn’t seem to recognize we have external enemies.
What good is the Constitution if there is no nation?
In short, we need security in order to repair our own house.
What good would it do to rebuild the house of the Republic if it keeps getting blown up?
It was our socialist democracy that should catch the blame for our current condition and it is that which should correct it!
We can't avoid our responsibilty.
No matter how much we may want to.
Winston Churchill said it best in 1943!
Twice in my lifetime the long arm of destiny has reached across the oceans and involved the entire life and manhood of the United States in a deadly struggle.
There was no use in saying "We don't want it; we won’t have it; our forebears left Europe to avoid these quarrels; we have founded a new world which has no contact with the old. "There was no use in that. The long arm reaches out remorselessly, and every one's existence, environment, and outlook undergo a swift and irresistible change. I will offer you one explanation - there are others, but one will suffice.
The price of greatness is responsibility. If the people of the United States had continued in a mediocre station, struggling with the wilderness, absorbed in their own affairs, and a factor of no consequence in the movement of the world, they might have remained forgotten and undisturbed beyond their protecting oceans: but one cannot rise to be in many ways the leading community in the civilised world without being involved in its problems, without being convulsed by its agonies and inspired by its causes.
If this has been proved in the past, as it has been, it will become indisputable in the future. The people of the United States cannot escape world responsibility.