The Revolution is the best thing happening at the right time to the best of ordinary people.
Reading through The Revolution: a Manifesto, I see so clearly the humble hero that is Ron Paul. I see him living his values as few do. His embrace of truth, his courage to speak that truth to power affect me deeply. I see that he, himself, describes his own efforts as a peaceful continuation of the American Revolution.
I may have a better idea than even he does about just how accurate his portrayal is of his continuing the Revolution.. I am volumes into a history of the times and conditions of our American Revolution. As I voice record Conceived In Liberty by Murray N. Rothbard, certain episodes claim the man Ron Paul as one of their own. See if you, too, don't find Ron Paul standing squarely on the colonialists side in his integrity and shared view of freedom's meaningfulness in ordinary lives.
Ron Paul sees that man and state hold opposing goals. Murray Rothbard expressed this vital difference:
I see history as centrally a race and conflict between "social power" – the productive consequence of voluntary interactions among men – and state power. In those eras of history when liberty – social power – has managed to race ahead of state power and control, the country and even mankind have flourished. In those eras when state power has managed to catch up with or surpass social power, mankind suffers and declines. P. 10 Vol I, Preface
Ron Paul deeply understands that the basis of behavior and social contracts and law and economics must be respect for people's values and choices. He has made such respect the core of his beliefs. His way of respect is the way of freedom, for self and others. He learned that when we "respect one another as individuals with rights and goals of our own, cooperation and goodwill suddenly become possible for the first time."
From 1681 through 1690, Ron Paul would have stood beside Quakers in Pennsylvania as they achieved
a remarkable pattern of peace and justice with the Indians [while they established]…a virtually self-governing colony. P. 404–406 Vol I, Chapter 55.
Colonialists felt, as Paul has felt, the same strong moral reasoning for opposing government intrusion into their lives. Both have reasoned, as John Locke had, that dissent and opposition sometimes become duties, as
Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any farther obedience, and are left to the common refuge which God hath provided for all men against force and violence. Vol I Pre-Preface
Ron Paul's courage to confront harmful, destructive behavior of legislators for thirty years is his continuation of the Revolution. He questions. He wonders whether it is actually compassionate to give handouts, as domestic welfare or as foreign aid. He has keen insight into the demeaning consequences of patriarchal behavior. It dehumanizes recipients into SSN numbers. It enslaves spirits through entitlements into giving up on being responsible for their own lives. He understands the generative power of the free market. It is simply put, "Give a man a fish and he eats for a day; teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime. Ron Paul would agree with Sir John Templeton, a skillful fund manager and philanthropist who said, "As a philanthropist, I feel that love can mean helping people discover their own abilities, including thrift, responsibility, and character."
Without the state putting themselves into a state of war with we the people, we would live more deeply and effectively. The state's coercion is not the most potent force on our planet, our individual giving is. Our giving, not the state's giving. A vote for the state to give instructs the state to steal. That is not our gift, that is our theft. State giving must first engage in state plundering of some producer's own earnings – his own property. Our giving requires creation and creation requires freedom.
Continuing the Revolution requires salutary neglect from whatever state exists. Please, meddlesome parasitical bureaucrats, leave us alone. Neglect us. Neglect us the way British rulers neglected us when they had been drawn into yet another continental military debacle. Leave us in liberty as defined in the 1720's:
By Liberty, I understand the power which every man has over his own actions, and his right to enjoy the fruit of his labor, art, and industry, as far as by it he hurts not the society, or any members of it, by taking from any member, or by hindering him from enjoying what he himself enjoys. The fruits of a man's honest industry are the just rewards of it, ascertained to him by the natural and eternal equity, as is his title to use them in the manner which he thinks fit: And thus, with the above limitations, every man is sole lord and arbiter of his own private actions and property…. Pre-Intro Vol II Cato's Letters
Leave us so that we might take up the libertarianism of Rhode Island before 1750.
True to its tradition of freedom and free trade, Rhode Island paid even less attention than other colonies to British trade restrictions. Nor did Rhode Islanders, with their Quaker traditions of antimilitarism, treat war as sacred; they continued happily to trade with their designated "enemies" even in time of war. … No colony was as decentralized as Rhode Island. Each town largely governed itself and often an individual town would simply neglect to tax its inhabitants for military or other expenses. P. 27 Vol II, Chapter 3.
Paul was asked about the flat tax, "Do you favor it?" "Why yes," he replied, ""as long as it is as flat as zero." Paul knows, as Pennsylvania and Rhode Island knew, that "economic freedom is based on a simple moral rule: everyone has a right to his or her life and property, and no one has the right to deprive anyone of these things."
Ron Paul has tapped into the lives of young people with his anti-tax message. The young are the ones facing a future burden of our debt that simply staggers them and shatters dreams. Paul's appeal to the freshest generation plugs him into the critical mass that continues all positive revolutions. Witness the Paulian enthusiasm continuously in eruption on YouTube and other internet sites. Power roots surpassed power professionals when the amateurs produced the best videos of Ron Paul and his message. The Revolutionaries are feeling competent and effective. As he has been present and supportive of his own children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, Ron Paul has been present, supportive, encouraging and inspiring to untold numbers of us. He is the patient teacher. He is the gentle guide. Yet, he is the unflinching social activist, also. He writes the manifesto. He drafts and submits necessary and proper bills into our Constitutional process.
As a Congressman, does Ron Paul have quarrels with Washington? Of course he does. He is, after all, one man of integrity in a setting whose DC initials could stand for the District of Criminals. But, from my perspective, Ron Paul simply continues such quarrels just like the tax refusal that permeated Rhode Island hundreds of years ago:
What did the groups quarrel about? About the essentials of government in any era or any country: allocation of the privileges to be derived from government, and of the burdens to pay for these privileges. The essence of government is an exploitative rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul process, and the jockeying of factions is to become as much of the Paul and as little of the Peter as possible. P. 54 Vol III, Chapter 9.
"Frdric Bastiat's term u2018legal plunder' applies to the role our own government plays today. Citizens of all classes u2018endeavor to live at the expense of everybody else.' It would be called what it is – u2018theft' – if carried out by a private individual," notes Paul. The state forcibly robs some men who have produced and saved to pay other men who have not, all the while retaining a large fee – as much as seventy percent – for themselves for the thieving service. The least prosperous individuals are the most vulnerable to the unintended harm of this looting when runaway printing of the robbers' money creates the hidden tax of inflation and current dollars purchase less and less.
Our national robbery program must be abolished. Citizens now work almost half of each year for the state. All that the individual has produced until that time is taken from him in some form of taxation. This is a policy of forced labor. This is not a humane or moral policy.
Paul posits, "What if we decided to stop robbing one another?" What if we had the imagination to conceive how a free people might solve its problems without introducing threats of violence – which is what government solutions ultimately amount to?
"I oppose the whole apparatus [of interest group lobbyists], the whole immoral system by which we use government to exploit our fellow citizens on behalf of our own interests," he states. Paul recalls that "This simple idea, that government should stay out of the looting business and leave people to their own pursuits, has had great moral appeal throughout U.S. history." "Walt Whitman urged that …government…make no more laws than those useful for preventing a man or body of men from infringing on the rights of other men."
Rethink what the role of government ought to be. "If we continue to think of our government as the policeman of the world and as the Great Provider from cradle to grave, our problems will grow worse and worse and our downward economic spiral, the first signs of which we are now witnessing, will only accelerate," Dr. Paul assures us.
Dr. Paul has spent his life saving life, not making war and wasting lives. Dr. Paul shakes his head at the drum beats of warmongers, wondering how they can choose such destruction in lieu of freedom, peace and prosperity.
Voracious appetites of a military-industrial machine always demand more and bigger wars.
There was method in the madness of [Massachusetts Governor William] Shirley's persistent and almost frenzied zeal for more and bigger wars. His ties of friendship and political alliance were held together only by the tenuous band of continuing mutual profit. The end or even the slackening of war meant lower government spending, diminished war contracts, lower patronage, slackened inflation, and tighter credit. And almost immediately, Shirley's plundering friends…grew sullen and restive. P. 221 Vol. II, Chapter 36.
That opportunity for plunder is why Randolph Bourne called war the health of the state. But, Ron Paul sees that war is the death of liberty and of many young people. "The domestic side effects of war are taxes, debt, lost liberties, centralization and the emasculation of the Constitution." He sadly notes that," Nonintervention is never presented as an option."
The arrogant administration of a contemporary King George continues.
King George III was determined to play a direct and decisive role in government… He was the "patriot king" smashing all political parties independent of his will, and ruling the nation without check or limit. P. 261, 264 Vol II, Chapter 41.
Our Current King George is using his own Patriot Act to smash us. "War has been used by presidents to excuse the imprisonment of American citizens of Japanese descent, to silence speech, to suspend habeas corpus, and even to control entire private industries. War does not justify the suspension of torture laws any more than it justifies the suspension of murder laws, the suspension of due process, or the suspension of the Second Amendment. Why are we allowing it?" demands Ron Paul.
Ron Paul's consistently courageous and principled truth-telling is changing our political landscape. He is not the unscrupulous demagogue that voters love to elect in anticipation of privileges and favors; he is actually worthy – he is our greatest champion of freedom. He is the mover of our continuing Revolution movement.
The Revolution is continuing. A successful opposition is being mounted against the status quo. Ron Paul is leading us to "begin to pull ourselves out from the crushing burden of debt and unfunded obligations. Enjoy a far more robust economic performance. Look to the future with confidence. Lift ourselves out from underneath a state apparatus that threatens our liberties, squanders our resources on needless wars, destroys the value of the dollar, and spews forth endless propaganda about how indispensable it is and how lost we would be without it."
But the propaganda of the state is simply that. Propaganda. There are those of us who do know that we would not be lost without government micromanaging our steps. We know, in fact, that only without such a state will we be free to breathe and choose and risk and love and live. Ron Paul has delivered a powerful indictment of the one-party system that governs and loots us and of official media that pretends we have real debate. No one in Washington would ever consider writing a book such as this
What does our tomorrow look like? Our tomorrow looks like our finest moments of our past. We go back to the future. We continue the Revolution. We do what voluntary Sons of Liberty did as
The revolutionary situation rendered the royal executive impotent and the colonial assemblies ineffective. The judges did not usually meet, and when they did it was at the behest rather of the radical organizations of the people than of the legally constituted authority. In short, effective rule of the colonies passed from the organs of government to voluntary organizations: to the Sons of Liberty and their popular allies. P. 138, Vol III, Chapter 32.
Ron Paul volunteer groups, building upon thousands of MeetUps, arise across the entire land to be heard and listened to. They are our Sons of Liberty returned. Their bombs are forcefully explosive, yet life-friendly, unlike those of the state. Candidates espousing similar freedom-friendly views of mankind now run as "Ron Paul candidates."
Read and listen to Ron Paul's message. Hear the echoes of our forefathers as they established ways to live respectfully, lovingly, prosperously and peacefully. As Paul proposes, honor ourselves.
Continue the Revolution.
April 28, 2008
