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View Full Version : "I don't always agree with Ron Paul but ..."




sergeant_x
11-21-2007, 10:05 AM
I see this a lot. I don't agree with all his positions either. Part of the reason that's the case, that people can firmly disagree with him on some issues and still support him, is that he's not hedging his bets the way the other candidates do. From his record, we can see he's not one to keep his finger in the wind, waiting for the next prevailing public whim.

Ron Paul represents the way our democracy is supposed to work. We don't have, nor really want, a pure direct democracy. The constitution assumes very few of us will have the time or the knowledge to make decisions on details of law and policy. Instead we elect qualified representatives who most closely reflect our values and general philosophy of government.

Most candidates these days have nothing like a 'philosophy of government'. They have a hodgepodge of opinions and strategic 'issues' gathered ad hoc in their quest for election. Without any kind of a discernible theme, their decisions are largely unpredictable, even when we feel we can trust them.

Ron Paul, on the other hand, has a clear and relatively consistent political philosophy. Anyone who looks into his ideas, or is familiar with libertarian thinking in general, can make safe predictions on the decisions he'll make in a given circumstance. This is what RP fans mean when they talk about 'the message'.

The problem with ideologies, of course, is ideologues. When a leader is so zealous in their cause that they are willing to defend their ideology, or it's public 'image', at the expense of prudent decision-making, they've lost their way. I'm convinced Ron Paul has resisted the ideologue impulse. If, for example, he was elected to office and had privy to top secret information that made pulling out of Iraq suicidal, I'm confident he'd renig on his campaign promise. I'd expect him to.

He's proven that his pragmatism overrides ideology repeatedly in his career, most notably in the very fact that he's carved out a long political career as a Republican despite the fact that the Libertarian party much more closely represents his values. He knows that humble service in the congress has been far more beneficial to the nation than vainly promoting an ideology on the stump.