Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Is this liberty?
The Ron Paul approach is internally inconsistent. He says we should have complete personal liberty and avoid foreign entanglements, and he says this is what the founders intended.
It sounds good, and must admit I'd been seduced into halfway appreciating the approach if not buying it.
But it doesn't work, and it's not what the founders intended.
= = = = =
First, why doesn't it work?
Okay, let's follow the isolationist model, as outlined by Bryan, Taft, Coolidge and Paul. We stay within our own borders, fortify to control incoming planes and missiles, and stop trying to influence the rest of the world.
This works nicely against traditional warfare. If you're trying to stop attacks by clearly identified enemy bombers and rockets, technology can do the job relatively well provided we stay totally alert for all potential threats. And if we have impressive enough fortification, traditional enemies will pick easier targets.
It doesn't work against internal subversion. The walls do nothing to stop or slow Mohammedan and Communist penetration of our media, schools, prisons, legislatures, and courts; and they do nothing to prevent home-grown terrorists from planning and executing attacks.
Preventing subversion and internal attack requires a serious internal police force, and requires a loss of liberty for any potential terrorist, which in turn means a serious loss of all those "due process rights" which the Paulites seem to enjoy so much.
If the authorities are willing to determine who's bad and who's good, catching and holding the bad guys doesn't require a Long Twilight Struggle.
Around 1900-1910 we had a serious threat from Anarchists, who were essentially revolutionaries without a utopian vision. They planted bombs all over the country and even assassinated President McKinley. The ancestor of the FBI put them down ruthlessly, violating every "right" in the book, and we had no further problem with the Anarchists.
In 1938 the Japs in Hawaii and California were setting up a campaign of sabotage. We declared martial law in Hawaii in '38 and rounded up the suspicious Japs in California just after Pearl Harbor. We also rounded up thousands of dubious Germans and Italians, with less fanfare. This violated every "right" in the book, but we had very little sabotage during WW2.
Sidenote: I just now realized there's something odd -- but revealing -- about the cultural response to these roundups. Ever since WW2 our Communist masters have been hammering us with the notion that the roundup of Jap saboteurs was utterly intolerable, our greatest sin of the century, etc, but I've never heard one word of criticism or even publicity about the similar roundup of European saboteurs. If you're going to make a distinction, this particular distinction seems backward since the Japs directly and treacherously attacked us while the Germans didn't. In addition, all of them were Fascists, thus all should have been equally anathema to our Communist masters. But that's the wrong logic. The correct logic is: Germans and Italians are White Devils, therefore punishing them was fine whether they did anything at all. Japs are Persons Of Color, therefore punishing them was sinful regardless of their deeds.
= = = = =
Second, why isn't it what the founders intended?
Simpler answer here. Freedom as defined by Paul's Libertarian followers has a totally different meaning from "pursuit of happiness" as defined by Hamilton and Jefferson.
Ham and Jeff wanted a land where non-criminal people are free to pursue productive ends. How do you achieve this freedom? By stopping the criminals and the saboteurs harshly and firmly, through legal AND CULTURAL means. By allowing normal people to discriminate between good and bad, without fear of a lawsuit. By punishing the bad instantly and publicly. If punishment is instant and public, it doesn't always need to be harsh and expensive. One public spanking, in sufficiently humiliating style, would reform most young dickheads far more effectively than a year in jail.
The Anti-Civilization Lawyers Union has so totally corrupted our court system AND our cultural discourse that we are required to reverse our natural perceptions for all consequential purposes. The ACLU's goal has been perfectly explicit from the start, and it's (not coincidentally) the same as the Anarchist's goal. Revolution and chaos.
Despite the decades of Orwellian cultural and legal pressure by a self-declared enemy agency, and despite the supine obedience of our political ratshit class, most Americans still have a solid sense of right and wrong, and a clear perception of what is in our national interest. Newt is trying to spread this news in his recent set of poll-based speeches.
In short, most Americans still understand this basic point: Liberty for normal and productive people has no connection at all to "rights". Habeas corpus, the high totem of the Libertarian faith, does nothing at all for normal people, and presumption of innocence does nothing to stop rogue prosecutors like Nifong.
These "rights" have been intentionally turned around by the ACLU, so that they only serve to free the bad and imprison the normal.
Hamilton and Jefferson, and more broadly the English common law tradition, aimed to keep normal people out of the hands of the court system entirely. Judges are supposed to use common sense to dismiss idiotic cases; prosecutors are supposed to filter out obviously nonsensical accusations and push hard on the obviously serious ones. Ham and Jeff didn't foresee the Leninist virus, didn't foresee that Federal judges would end up serving an enemy ideology whose explicit announced goal is to destroy Christian civilization.
The solution to this problem cannot be gradual and incremental. Judicial restraint is just a euphemism for letting the enemy win. And it's not enough to spend one year per single appointment in the Senate while waiting for the enemy judges to die off.
The Federal appellate system, AND ALL THE CASE LAW INVALIDLY CREATED THEREBY, must be totally eliminated for the duration of this war and rebuilt later if we find the need for it. (We probably won't, since it's not even defined in the Constitution.) Prosecutors should be supervised by handlers without legal training to insure that they use ordinary sense and judgment. (In theory, eliminating all the case law may conceivably eliminate one or two words or phrases which happened, through omission or typographical error, to agree with the Constitution; but that's a sacrifice worth making in order to rip out the 99.99999999999999% of the case law which is purely evil and purely destructive.)
The Ron Paul forces, by emphasizing "due process" and casting aside the common sense that underpins common law, are serving Lenin and Osama, not the Constitution. ¶ 8:53 AM
It sounds good, and must admit I'd been seduced into halfway appreciating the approach if not buying it.
But it doesn't work, and it's not what the founders intended.
= = = = =
First, why doesn't it work?
Okay, let's follow the isolationist model, as outlined by Bryan, Taft, Coolidge and Paul. We stay within our own borders, fortify to control incoming planes and missiles, and stop trying to influence the rest of the world.
This works nicely against traditional warfare. If you're trying to stop attacks by clearly identified enemy bombers and rockets, technology can do the job relatively well provided we stay totally alert for all potential threats. And if we have impressive enough fortification, traditional enemies will pick easier targets.
It doesn't work against internal subversion. The walls do nothing to stop or slow Mohammedan and Communist penetration of our media, schools, prisons, legislatures, and courts; and they do nothing to prevent home-grown terrorists from planning and executing attacks.
Preventing subversion and internal attack requires a serious internal police force, and requires a loss of liberty for any potential terrorist, which in turn means a serious loss of all those "due process rights" which the Paulites seem to enjoy so much.
If the authorities are willing to determine who's bad and who's good, catching and holding the bad guys doesn't require a Long Twilight Struggle.
Around 1900-1910 we had a serious threat from Anarchists, who were essentially revolutionaries without a utopian vision. They planted bombs all over the country and even assassinated President McKinley. The ancestor of the FBI put them down ruthlessly, violating every "right" in the book, and we had no further problem with the Anarchists.
In 1938 the Japs in Hawaii and California were setting up a campaign of sabotage. We declared martial law in Hawaii in '38 and rounded up the suspicious Japs in California just after Pearl Harbor. We also rounded up thousands of dubious Germans and Italians, with less fanfare. This violated every "right" in the book, but we had very little sabotage during WW2.
Sidenote: I just now realized there's something odd -- but revealing -- about the cultural response to these roundups. Ever since WW2 our Communist masters have been hammering us with the notion that the roundup of Jap saboteurs was utterly intolerable, our greatest sin of the century, etc, but I've never heard one word of criticism or even publicity about the similar roundup of European saboteurs. If you're going to make a distinction, this particular distinction seems backward since the Japs directly and treacherously attacked us while the Germans didn't. In addition, all of them were Fascists, thus all should have been equally anathema to our Communist masters. But that's the wrong logic. The correct logic is: Germans and Italians are White Devils, therefore punishing them was fine whether they did anything at all. Japs are Persons Of Color, therefore punishing them was sinful regardless of their deeds.
= = = = =
Second, why isn't it what the founders intended?
Simpler answer here. Freedom as defined by Paul's Libertarian followers has a totally different meaning from "pursuit of happiness" as defined by Hamilton and Jefferson.
Ham and Jeff wanted a land where non-criminal people are free to pursue productive ends. How do you achieve this freedom? By stopping the criminals and the saboteurs harshly and firmly, through legal AND CULTURAL means. By allowing normal people to discriminate between good and bad, without fear of a lawsuit. By punishing the bad instantly and publicly. If punishment is instant and public, it doesn't always need to be harsh and expensive. One public spanking, in sufficiently humiliating style, would reform most young dickheads far more effectively than a year in jail.
The Anti-Civilization Lawyers Union has so totally corrupted our court system AND our cultural discourse that we are required to reverse our natural perceptions for all consequential purposes. The ACLU's goal has been perfectly explicit from the start, and it's (not coincidentally) the same as the Anarchist's goal. Revolution and chaos.
Despite the decades of Orwellian cultural and legal pressure by a self-declared enemy agency, and despite the supine obedience of our political ratshit class, most Americans still have a solid sense of right and wrong, and a clear perception of what is in our national interest. Newt is trying to spread this news in his recent set of poll-based speeches.
In short, most Americans still understand this basic point: Liberty for normal and productive people has no connection at all to "rights". Habeas corpus, the high totem of the Libertarian faith, does nothing at all for normal people, and presumption of innocence does nothing to stop rogue prosecutors like Nifong.
These "rights" have been intentionally turned around by the ACLU, so that they only serve to free the bad and imprison the normal.
Hamilton and Jefferson, and more broadly the English common law tradition, aimed to keep normal people out of the hands of the court system entirely. Judges are supposed to use common sense to dismiss idiotic cases; prosecutors are supposed to filter out obviously nonsensical accusations and push hard on the obviously serious ones. Ham and Jeff didn't foresee the Leninist virus, didn't foresee that Federal judges would end up serving an enemy ideology whose explicit announced goal is to destroy Christian civilization.
The solution to this problem cannot be gradual and incremental. Judicial restraint is just a euphemism for letting the enemy win. And it's not enough to spend one year per single appointment in the Senate while waiting for the enemy judges to die off.
The Federal appellate system, AND ALL THE CASE LAW INVALIDLY CREATED THEREBY, must be totally eliminated for the duration of this war and rebuilt later if we find the need for it. (We probably won't, since it's not even defined in the Constitution.) Prosecutors should be supervised by handlers without legal training to insure that they use ordinary sense and judgment. (In theory, eliminating all the case law may conceivably eliminate one or two words or phrases which happened, through omission or typographical error, to agree with the Constitution; but that's a sacrifice worth making in order to rip out the 99.99999999999999% of the case law which is purely evil and purely destructive.)
The Ron Paul forces, by emphasizing "due process" and casting aside the common sense that underpins common law, are serving Lenin and Osama, not the Constitution. ¶ 8:53 AM
