RPF referendum on the Constitution of the United States of America

[Mike4Freedom]

If the constitution failed to prevent the government doing what it has already done and is currently doing, it has failed.

[Bryan]

I don't understand your point. The constitution was designed to pay AWI debt, as the AoC had no ability to extract money from the states.
Whatever it's purported intent, the subsequent Whiskey Tax showed it for what it is.
The constitution as a voluntary compact, certainly could recognize the rights of the individual IRT abuses BY A STATE. But there should be no mechanism within the compact that would allow the compact itself to violate an individual's rights.
In essence, the constitution should have jurisdiction over the states, and not supercede the state's jurisdiction of it's own people.

"National" elections are another example of our federal cluster$#@!. The President was intended to preside over the states...not the people. Electors were selected by the states, not the people. Electors selected by popular vote is another reconstruction-era goodie, further neutering the power of the states. Presidential elections as they stand today are for entertainment purposes only. One vote among 100 million is a joke.

It can be argued that the intent of the Constitution, along with the Bill of Rights, is to support liberty (minus tariffs), it can also defend individuals from invasion, etc. Consider that there are three classes of governments:
1) Ones that you agree to the contract.
2) Ones that impose themselves over geographic space but only support your rights.
3) Ones that impose themselves over geographic space and take away your rights (tyranny).

What we currently have is #3, which is a major problem, what the original intent was can be argued to be #2.

[otherone]

If the constitution failed to prevent the government doing what it has already done and is currently doing, it has failed.

It has only failed for those whom it has not benefited.

[otherone]

It can be argued that the intent of the Constitution, along with the Bill of Rights, is to support liberty (minus tariffs), it can also defend individuals from invasion, etc. Consider that there are three classes of governments:
1) Ones that you agree to the contract.
2) Ones that impose themselves over geographic space but only support your rights.
3) Ones that impose themselves over geographic space and take away your rights (tyranny).

What we currently have is #3, which is a major problem, what the original intent was can be argued to be #2.

That's an interesting way of framing it.
As a compact, the intent was to act for the benefit of all states, in areas where the states could not act independently (commerce, defense) and to act as judiciary oversight to disputes among states. There was no intent to exert geographic sovereignty. TJ's Louisiana Purchase was a self-recognized act of hypocrisy, and unconstitutional as well. Until it wasn't.
When one sees the history of the US as a massive central power grab, the content of that history becomes much easier to understand, and predict.
We were taught that the system of "checks and balances" is through the three branches of government, which is the same as having police police themselves. The original check on the federal government was the states. That ended at Appomattox Courthouse.

[Brian4Liberty]

If the constitution failed to prevent the government doing what it has already done and is currently doing, it has failed.

That is a popular criticism and somewhat accurate. At the same time, it is the fault of the leaders, not the Constitution or law itself.

For instance, if we start with a very simple law, say "though shall not murder", and someone murders someone, it is not a failure or fault of the law.

The next step is where failures will occur. How and who determines if the law was broken? Who decides the punishment? In the most general sense, someone (or group of people) must judge. It could be very simple, or it can become very complex. That's where we are today. A system so complex, and intentionally so, that the Constitution (law) has a hard time constraining government and it's cronies. They violate the Constitution, and there is no legal system that effectively stops them.

I blame the legal system that has evolved, not the Constitution.

Here's what they do believe in: they believe in a vast legal system, where all laws are open to debate and litigation. A system where any position can be defended or attacked on a "legal" basis. A system where the most powerful generally get their way, regardless of the letter or intent of the law. A system where anything can be justified. A system which enables power to reside with those with the most knowledge of the law, and how to use and manipulate it. A system where maximum employment is enjoyed for all those who desire to support, sustain and profit from the legal system.

They believe in no law at all, expertly disguised as a society fully enveloped in law.

The Constitution is the worst sort of law for them. It's far too clear, simple and supreme. The best law in their eyes is ambiguous, convoluted, complex and with no priorities at all.

[BV2]

Denuded of the Bill of Rights-which I belive it has been- the Constituion ceases the have any sway over this beating heart. I don't really care for the procedural/administrative portions, as they have been stripped of spirit. Excuse the pleonastic tautology.

So yeah, I think the BoR is as sacred a document as ink on paper comes. No BoR, the constituion is as dead as the trees it is written on.

[Ender]

I'll second that.

Quote Originally Posted by Occam's Banana
R.I.P. BuddyRey

And I.

[Ender]

Denuded of the Bill of Rights-which I belive it has been- the Constituion ceases the have any sway over this beating heart. I don't really care for the procedural/administrative portions, as they have been stripped of spirit. Excuse the pleonastic tautology.

So yeah, I think the BoR is as sacred a document as ink on paper comes. No BoR, the constituion is as dead as the trees it is written on.

Actually the Constitution was written on hemp.

And I agree. I also think the Anti-Federalists were correct and that the Constitution was a Hamiltonian Coup for big government.

[ThePaleoLibertarian]

The people who really love the Constitution, consider the following. Which would be better: Ron Paul the ineffective President who is limited by a neocon and progressive congress who can maybe cut taxes here and slow the growth of spending there, or Ron Paul the king, who could end the Fed or the drug war with the stroke of a pen?

[Sola_Fide]

The people who really love the Constitution, consider the following. Which would be better: Ron Paul the ineffective President who is limited by a neocon and progressive congress who can maybe cut taxes here and slow the growth of spending there, or Ron Paul the king, who could end the Fed or the drug war with the stroke of a pen?

Or, how about no king but Jesus. Why give a sovereign the power to be good or evil?

[osan]

It's a deep discussion, for sure. I generally side with the constitution while respectfully giving consideration to its shortcomings.

Such discussions of their nature beg the question of how deeply into the normative one wishes to retreat in abandon of the real. If we go all the way, I would see all states/governments sent to the furnaces of hell. People would be free in point of positive and practical fact and would accept the costs as well as the benefits that proper freedom brings. They would accept the undesirable vicissitudes of life to the degree they are materially incapable of countervailing them at any given time and would not be so much as tempted into regressing to the fantasy world of the progressive Weakman.

But that is not the world in which we live. We are imprisoned in the house of the Weakmen - those wretched creatures whose pathological timidity, fear, and avarice combine in result to form corruption with no bottom, regardless of how "nice" they may otherwise seem. Being Weakmen, their nature leads them to the choice of becoming MereCogs - the faithful lapdogs of the "state" who toil for their masters in exchange for the lies of security and free lunch, as well as doled privilege. This woeful state of existence, for I dare not call it "life", represents the vast and overwhelming majority of the race of men worldwide. As such, they form vast unions of mind and body that for all intents and purposes becomes an effective gestalt, lending the only practical and material reality to the vapor otherwise known as "the state".

Such conglomerations of the horde must, by the hard statistical reality of their natures, form a mean character. Without exception known to me, that character is always of a low denominator, the value of which one observes as always going down, but never up in any meaningful way. This is what "statism", the mangled and dismantled child of Empire, brings as a matter of unavoidable course. Things can be no other way when the mental disease that is the "state" infects the minds of men in sufficiently large numbers.

This all being the practical and positive case, (at least for now) we are each of us faced with a very basic choice: acknowledge the grim nature of the currently predominant social architecture of human society, or wander dangerously close to the borders of a fantasy world that is the close analog to that of the Weakmen.

While it is of great value to work out the philosophical ideals of liberty based in the valid and proven principles of proper human relations, it is my opinion that we as a species are in no position to realize that "friction-free"* vision of life on earth at this time. Furthermore, if we insist on an all-or-nothing deal, my regretful pragmatist suggests that the answer will be nothing, first time and every time. I see no possibility of getting three hundred million people on board with the ideals of freedom, much less the nearly right billions that in habit this world. The mean human is nowhere nearly equal to the task of facing life as a free man, particularly when given the choice to remain the Weakman fulfilling his role as MereCog in exchange for the master's permission to avoid his accountability to reality.

The practicable solution then, at least for the foreseeable future, is to optimize human freedom in the context of the tyrannies that Empire by force of its very nature imposes upon us. A penultimate example of such tyranny lies in that of armed forces. I feel fairly safe in writing that few actually want to pay taxes to fund our armies. In equal measure, I might also assert that many do not want armies at all, regardless of how they are funded. Certainly it is within physical possibility to dissolve our armed forces tomorrow, if it suited us, but how would that work out in reality? While I cannot say for absolute certain, my inner paranoid runs quickly to the end of an unarmed nation as large and wealthy as America at the hands of well-armed global neighbors like Russia and China.

The lowest denominator to which the first nation capable of imposing consequences of note is willing to stoop, is that to which all others must debase themselves if they do not want to suffer said consequences. Imagine were Russia the only nation to develop an army. It is huge, well trained and managed... has nukes. How long would it be before someone there got the brilliant idea that expanding its territories is called for, whether by reason, need, or manifest destiny? I would not give it ten minutes. They then run roughshod over the world, killing, raping, looting... you know, the things we humans do so well and with such predictable devotion. This is all but guaranteed to come.

Therefore, not wanting to fall to predation over and over, possibly facing extinction as a population and culture, the other nations follow suit in the interest of maintaining parity pursuant to the desire to survive. The result can be nothing other than an endless spiraling ever more deeply into the pit of devolutionary rot. Such decay simply cannot be avoided; at least not as of this writing. One question this raises is, "does the pit have a bottom?". While I do not know the answer, I suspect that it does. If so, the next question becomes, "what happens when you hit it?", to which my unequivocal answer is, "nothing good". But I digress.

We are, then, faced with the choice of addressing reality or fleeing it. The progressive Weakman flees for all his skinny stilts will carry him, deeply ensconcing himself in his world of bunnies, light, and unicorn poo. The unremitting liberty idealist acts similarly, and while I grant that his ideal is far and away saner than that of his Weakman analog, it remains equally removed from possible realization. In so cleaving to the all-or-nothing attitude of seeking that which is currently not within human grasp, he becomes a Weakman analog not in the sense of grasping for a demented ideal, but of expecting a sane but very lofty one to become real under the currently prevailing conditions of human mental life.

Somewhere in between these diametrically opposing ideals, one sane and the other not, swims the real world, the solution to whose problems must be practicable, if they are to be solutions at all. That is where the Weakmen fail with such fiery spectacle and misery: they cleave to their hallucinatory fantasies of social justice and other political porn with an unstinting and deeply violent refusal to consider that maybe even the smallest sliver might not be practically attainable. They want it all, want it now, and want someone else to make it happen.

A similar hazard waits in ambush for the liberty lover who turns his back to the practical difficulties of the world as it currently exists; the "reality-challenged" idealist who will brook no compromise with his all-or-nothing attitude. This, in fact, is the one way in which the Weakmen have outdone the liberty loving idealist at nearly every turn: the former have been willing to take their victory piecemeal, vis-à-vis as one heaping pile. This is a great shortcoming of those who seek eventual freedom and it must change if any real progress is to be expected.

This, then, brings us full circle to reality and the question of how to best and most effectively deal with it such that the circumstance and status of our liberties improves, rather than further deteriorating. The momentum of Empire is nearly as great as that of the planet itself. Try stopping the earth from rotating from one moment to the next. It's not going to happen, and if it did calamity would be the only possible result. It took us thousands of years to come to this sad pass. It will likely take a bit longer than our lifetimes to put things back to rights.

Only fools call for an Article V convention. They want their changes NOW, fully blind to the possibility that they would likely lose the little they have managed to retain, were such an event to be held. I am a purist by nature, as a close friend reminds me often, implying the perfect as being the enemy of the good. I don't quite subscribe to that position, but there is a kernel of deep validity there, suggesting that a more practicable approach to governance is highly recommended by reason.

The Constitution is weak in many ways and in a few it is hideously and deeply flawed. But it nevertheless carries with it the seed potential for restoring men to the greatest degree of liberty possible in a world polluted with the stench and filth of Empire. I fear there is no actual freedom attainable here, but only optimized liberty. My inner purist thinks that sucks, but my pragmatist asks, "what would you prefer, optimal liberty in a world where true freedom is currently not going to happen for the average man, or that which we have now?" This is not false dichotomy, either; it is a matter of practical reality and truth in a world where men with guns champ at their bits in anticipation of "go" orders, upon which they would murder you and your children without hesitation or compunction.

The race of men may one day make true freedom a practical reality. They will not, however, do it today. Therefore, take baby steps in the right direction. It is better than taking the tack of the Weakman, stomping and crying in demand of that which isn't going to happen. If we can bring ourselves to live and govern properly by the specifications of the Constitution, we will have improved our lots by at least three full orders of magnitude, and likely several more.

Who can say what may happen in the far future? Ideally, a return to the pure autodiathism by which our ancient tribal ancestors lived for tens of thousands of years lies along humanity's path. Barring that, I could see one day the possibility of drafting a new constitution that would address the woeful inadequacies of the current certificate. But until that day, it is my unequivocal recommendation that we first learn to adjust governance to a proper compliance with the Constitution we now have. It is a flawed document - even wretched in a place or two - but the seed at its heart remains valid and viable, leaving the onus with us to turn toward that foundational document, as well as its cornerstone instrument, our Declaration Of Independence.

Let us face them honestly and with better education pursuant to fulfilling the obligations we hold to ourselves and each other to properly answer the call those documents make to the inherent freedom of the human spirit.

I do wonder how well people who want to return to the Articles know their history and what is necessary for healthy governance and the interests of The One. But I digress.

The One?

[thoughtomator]

Looks like I've managed to shame another dozen people into grudgingly going on the record as supporters of the Constitution.

Of course, just like when Ron Paul told you all to follow the Constitution, the moment the spotlight is off the betrayals and sabotage of the cause of Constitutionalism will resume, when I'm no longer here to shame everyone into it.

[thoughtomator]

Such discussions of their nature beg the question of how deeply into the normative one wishes to go in abandon of the real. If we go all the way, I would see all states/governments sent to the furnaces of hell. People would be free in point of positive and practical fact and would accept the costs as well as the benefits that this state of being brings. They would accept the vicissitudes of life to the degree they are materially incapable of countervailing them at any given time and would not be so much as tempted into retreating to the fantasy world of the progressive Weakman.

But that is not the world in which we live. We are imprisoned in the house of the Weakmen - those wretched creatures whose pathological timidity, fear, and avarice combine in result to form corruption with no bottom. Being Weakmen, their nature leads them to the choice of becoming MereCogs - the faithful lapdogs of the "state" who toil for their masters in exchange for the lies of security and free lunch. This is the vast and overwhelming majority of the race of men and as such they form vast unions of mind and body that for all intents and purposes becomes an effective gestalt, lending the only practical and material reality to the vapor otherwise known as "the state". Such conglomerations of the horde must, by hard statistical reality, form a mean character. Without exception known to me, that character is always of a low denominator, the value of which one observes as always going down, but never up. This is what statism, the mangled and dismantled child of Empire, brings as a matter of unavoidable nature. Things can be no other way when the mental disease that is the "state" infects the minds of men in sufficiently large numbers.

This all being the practical and positive case, at least for now, we are each of us faced with a very basic choice: acknowledge the grim nature of the currently predominant social architecture of human society, or wander dangerously close to the borders of a fantasy world that is the close analog to that of the Weakmen. While it is of great value to work out the philosophical ideals of liberty based in the valid and proven principles of proper human relations, it is my opinion at this time that we as a species are in no position to realize that friction-free vision of life on earth. However, if we insist on an all-or-nothing deal, my regretful pragmatist suggests that the result will be nothing, first time and every time.

The solution then, at least for the foreseeable future, is to optimize human freedom in the context of the tyrannies that Empire by force of its very nature imposes upon us. A penultimate example of such tyranny lies in that of armed forces. I feel fairly safe in writing that few, if any of us, want to pay taxes to fund our armies. In equal measure, I might also assert that we do now want armies, regardless of how they are funded. Certainly it is within possibility to dissolve our armed forces tomorrow, if it suited us, but what would the reality look like? While I cannot say for absolute certain, my inner paranoid runs quickly to the end of an unarmed nation as large and wealthy as America at the hands of well-armed global neighbors like Russia, China, Saudi Arabia...

The lowest denominator to which the first nation, capable of imposing consequence of note, is willing to stoop is that to which all others must debase themselves if they do not want to suffer those repercussions. Imagine Russia were the only nation to develop an army. It is huge, well trained and managed... has nukes. How long would it be before someone there got the brilliant idea that expanding its territories is called for, whether by reason, need, or manifest destiny? I would not give it ten minutes. They then run roughshod over the world, killing, raping, looting... you know, the things we humans do so well and with such predictable devotion.

Therefore, not wanting to fall to the predators time and again and possibly facing extinction as a population and culture, the other nations follow suit in the interest of maintaining parity. The result can be nothing other than an endless spiraling into the pit of devolutionary rot. It simply cannot be avoided - at least not as of this writing. One question this raises is, "does the pit have a bottom?". While I do not know the answer, I suspect that it does. If so, the next question becomes, "what happens when you hit that bottom?", to which my unequivocal answer is, "nothing good". But I digress.

We are, then, faced with the choice of addressing reality or fleeing it. The progressive Weakman flees for all his skinny stilts will carry him, ensconcing himself in his world of bunnies, light, and unicorn poo. The unremitting liberty idealist acts similarly. While I grant that his vision is far and away saner than that of his opposing analog, it remains sufficiently remote a possibility, given human nature and current circumstance that he becomes the Weakman analog not in the sense of grasping for the ideal, but of expecting it.

Somewhere in there swims the real world, the solution to whose problems must be practicable, if they are to be solutions at all. That is where the Weakmen fail with such fiery spectacle and misery: they cleave to their masturbatory fantasies of social justice and other political porn with an unstinting and deeply violent refusal to consider that maybe even the smallest sliver of that for which they pine, demand, and throw tantrums might not be practically attainable. They want it all, want it now, and want someone else to make it happen. A similar hazard waits in ambush for the liberty lover who turns his back to the practical difficulties of the world as it currently exists.

This, then, brings us full circle to reality and the question of how to best and most effectively deal with it such that the circumstance and status of our liberties improves, rather than further deteriorating. The momentum of Empire is nearly as great as that of the planet itself. Try stop the earth from rotating from one moment to the next. Not going to happen, and if it did calamity would be the only possible result. It took us thousands of years to come to this sad pass. It will likely take far longer than our lifetimes to put things back to rights.

Only fools call for an Article V convention. They want their changes NOW, fully blind to the possibility that they might lose the little they have managed to retain were such an event to be held. I am a purist, as a close friend reminds me often, implying the perfect as being the enemy of the good. I don't quite subscribe to that position, but there is a kernel of validity there, suggesting that a more practicable approach to governance is highly recommended by reason.

The Constitution is weak in a many ways. In a few ways, the Constitution is hideously and deeply flawed. But it nevertheless carries with it the seed potential for restoring men to the greatest degree of liberty possible in a world polluted with the stench and filth of Empire. I fear there is no actual freedom attainable here, but only optimized liberty. My inner purist think that sucks, but my inner pragmatist asks, "what would you prefer, optimal liberty in a world where true freedom is currently not going to happen for the average man, or that which we have now? This is not false dichotomy, either; it is a matter of practical reality and truth in a world where men with guns champ at their bits in anticipation of "go" orders.

The race of men may one day make true freedom a practical reality. They will not do it today. Therefore, take baby steps in the right direction. It is better than taking the tack of the Weakman, stomping and crying in demand of that which ain't gonna happen.

What is the most practical approach to attaining the longer-term goal of improved liberty, if not true freedom?



The One?

I'm requoting your post in its entirety in the hope that additional people will read its very worthy content.

Thank you for the first actual defense of the Constitution I've seen on this site for over a year, other than those I've posted myself.

[presence]

You're perfectly entitled to hold this opinion. It might even be defensible.

But even if it is, it is incontrovertibly in direct opposition to the central message that Ron Paul built the liberty movement on - adherence to the Constitution - and these here are the "Ron Paul forums".

So here on Ron Paul forums I can't even get a half dozen others to come out and on the record state that they support the Constitution of the United States when that is the very cause we all gathered here in the first place to promote, the evidence of a hostile takeover is conclusive.

You're perfectly entitled to hold your opinion, but if you had any integrity you would admit it is in direct contravention of the central mission of the liberty movement and take it elsewhere. Your presence, and that of those who hold similar anti-Constitutional views, has no effect other than to deny people who want to make the US government adhere to the Constitution a place to organize.

If you have a purpose here other than mental masturbation and the injection of chaos into the liberty movement, say it.

My purpose here is the promotion of free markets and elucidation of the nefarious effects of regulated markets.



I support the destruction of taxed tea in Boston 1773.
I support the spirit of revolution present on Lexington Green 1775.
I support the declaration of independence 1776.
I hold the spirit of all, especially the confiscation and destruction of taxed tea,
higher than 1789 codification of the rights then asserted.
And certainly higher than any enumerated entitlements like the 16th Amendment codified thereafter.

If I had to wager which principle is more important to Ron Paul; which was most central to the "Ron Paul Liberty Movement"; intellectual adherence to the text of "constitutionality" or willful faithfulness to the principles of "free markets", I'm putting my chips on free markets hands down. Everything I've studied about Ron tells me his philosophical roots are much more deeply entrenched in Austrian economic texts than in constitutional scholarship.

If every free man asserted his free will; seized the God given liberty to engage in free market human action; standing in defiance of state economic controls, then constitutions wouldn't matter and state budgets wouldn't even exist to engage in all the unconstitutional violent behaviour we see today.




'We endorse the idea of voluntarism; self-responsibility: Family, friends, and churches to solve problems, rather than saying that some monolithic government is going to make you take care of yourself and be a better person. It's a preposterous notion: It never worked, it never will. The government can't make you a better person; it can't make you follow good habits.' - Ron Paul 1988

Voluntarism is "any metaphysical or psychological system that assigns to the will (Latin: voluntas)
a more predominant role
than that attributed to the intellect",^[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volunt...al_voluntarism



For every modern SWAT raid that comes of illegitimate state regulation, I remember that the will of free men prevailed when in
April 18, 1775, hundreds of British troops marched from Boston to nearby Concord in order to seize an arms cache.

[JK/SEA]

"Well, I can't process facts and form coherent arguments on my own, and if any of you can and disagree with the people who tell me what to do, then I will call you names and potentially be violent with you."

I don't believe it's actually possible for you to understand where we're coming from.

true enough...wars have been started over less.

pot kettle black.

[phill4paul]

Looks like I've managed to shame another dozen people into grudgingly going on the record as supporters of the Constitution.

Of course, just like when Ron Paul told you all to follow the Constitution, the moment the spotlight is off the betrayals and sabotage of the cause of Constitutionalism will resume, when I'm no longer here to shame everyone into it.

Yawn.

[fisharmor]

true enough...wars have been started over less.

pot kettle black.

Do you understand that I was paraphrasing your post?

[thoughtomator]

The issue circles around to how do you deal with people that violate others rights who do not adhere to any authority? At some level you have to just go after them, but with a Constitution they still have a right to a trial vs just shooting them in the streets (or whatever).

This deserves repeating.

That's exactly why the concept of the Rule of Law exists. That's the alternative to settling disputes with warmaking.

The gulf between what would be ideal for perfect beings in an infinite environment, and what is the best that can be done with actual human beings in the real world, is at the core of why libertarianism is relevant to that real world and why anarchism is not.

Which brings us back to what RPF has become since February.

To argue that point - the central message of Ron Paul's political career - here, in a place named for him, I must subject myself to all the worst behaviors the Internet has to offer? That there should be three ad hominems and a pair of outright troll posts per serious reply, does it really make sense to attempt discussion in such a venue?

So, I've been down the road of trying to be reasonable with unreasonable people - as the record shows, I held my peace for months attempting to provide rational sense to those people, gathered all the evidence to prove beyond any doubt (reasonable or otherwise) that they had no intention of being even slightly honest in debate, then got to witness a Lord of the Flies type purge of people who actually do adhere to the message of Ron Paul (allowed to run rampant and eventually conclude a successful hostile takeover of RPF). I've done the alerting and the extensive conversations with mods and admins.

Every single avenue of redress has been pursued and nothing more than the most nominal action has been taken, resulting in a once vibrant community now being a sewer of unironically-repeated corporate propaganda, unironically mixed with a fantasy anarchsim (that Ron Paul explicitly called out as being unfit for imperfect human beings), with every effort to work the system to the ends of liberty drowned out in flurries of "Trumper!" etc.

It is simply not reasonable to ask the site's users to suck all that up and push placebo alert buttons... and have placebo discussions like this one.

[JK/SEA]

Do you understand that I was paraphrasing your post?

yep...my statement still stands.

[JK/SEA]

This deserves repeating.

That's exactly why the concept of the Rule of Law exists. That's the alternative to settling disputes with warmaking.

The gulf between what would be ideal for perfect beings in an infinite environment, and what is the best that can be done with actual human beings in the real world, is at the core of why libertarianism is relevant to that real world and why anarchism is not.

Which brings us back to what RPF has become since February.

To argue that point - the central message of Ron Paul's political career - here, in a place named for him, I must subject myself to all the worst behaviors the Internet has to offer? That there should be three ad hominems and a pair of outright troll posts per serious reply, does it really make sense to attempt discussion in such a venue?

So, I've been down the road of trying to be reasonable with unreasonable people - as the record shows, I held my peace for months attempting to provide rational sense to those people, gathered all the evidence to prove beyond any doubt (reasonable or otherwise) that they had no intention of being even slightly honest in debate, then got to witness a Lord of the Flies type purge of people who actually do adhere to the message of Ron Paul (allowed to run rampant and eventually conclude a successful hostile takeover of RPF). I've done the alerting and the extensive conversations with mods and admins.

Every single avenue of redress has been pursued and nothing more than the most nominal action has been taken, resulting in a once vibrant community now being a sewer of unironically-repeated corporate propaganda, unironically mixed with a fantasy anarchsim (that Ron Paul explicitly called out as being unfit for imperfect human beings), with every effort to work the system to the ends of liberty drowned out in flurries of "Trumper!" etc.

It is simply not reasonable to ask the site's users to suck all that up and push placebo alert buttons... and have placebo discussions like this one.

couldn't have said it better, and we have people in here who have taken oaths to the Constitution in here who fall into your descriptions.

i'm also seeing one of our 'resident' members in here who claims to be a Marine hasn't signed the poll yet...interesting.

[Anti Federalist]

Gotta respond with boo-hiss. This is WAY too simplistically posited, sorry.

That.

Who is this guy?

HVACTech's sock puppet?

The answer is much too nuanced to be addressed with a simple yes or no.

[thoughtomator]

The answer is much too nuanced to be addressed with a simple yes or no.

If asked that question, what do you think Ron Paul's answer would be?

[luctor-et-emergo]

If asked that question, what do you think Ron Paul's answer would be?

[Anti Federalist]

Such discussions of their nature beg the question of how deeply into the normative one wishes to go in abandon of the real. If we go all the way, I would see all states/governments sent to the furnaces of hell. People would be free in point of positive and practical fact and would accept the costs as well as the benefits that this state of being brings. They would accept the vicissitudes of life to the degree they are materially incapable of countervailing them at any given time and would not be so much as tempted into retreating to the fantasy world of the progressive Weakman.

But that is not the world in which we live. We are imprisoned in the house of the Weakmen - those wretched creatures whose pathological timidity, fear, and avarice combine in result to form corruption with no bottom. Being Weakmen, their nature leads them to the choice of becoming MereCogs - the faithful lapdogs of the "state" who toil for their masters in exchange for the lies of security and free lunch. This is the vast and overwhelming majority of the race of men and as such they form vast unions of mind and body that for all intents and purposes becomes an effective gestalt, lending the only practical and material reality to the vapor otherwise known as "the state". Such conglomerations of the horde must, by hard statistical reality, form a mean character. Without exception known to me, that character is always of a low denominator, the value of which one observes as always going down, but never up. This is what statism, the mangled and dismantled child of Empire, brings as a matter of unavoidable nature. Things can be no other way when the mental disease that is the "state" infects the minds of men in sufficiently large numbers.

This all being the practical and positive case, at least for now, we are each of us faced with a very basic choice: acknowledge the grim nature of the currently predominant social architecture of human society, or wander dangerously close to the borders of a fantasy world that is the close analog to that of the Weakmen. While it is of great value to work out the philosophical ideals of liberty based in the valid and proven principles of proper human relations, it is my opinion at this time that we as a species are in no position to realize that friction-free vision of life on earth. However, if we insist on an all-or-nothing deal, my regretful pragmatist suggests that the result will be nothing, first time and every time.

The solution then, at least for the foreseeable future, is to optimize human freedom in the context of the tyrannies that Empire by force of its very nature imposes upon us. A penultimate example of such tyranny lies in that of armed forces. I feel fairly safe in writing that few, if any of us, want to pay taxes to fund our armies. In equal measure, I might also assert that we do now want armies, regardless of how they are funded. Certainly it is within possibility to dissolve our armed forces tomorrow, if it suited us, but what would the reality look like? While I cannot say for absolute certain, my inner paranoid runs quickly to the end of an unarmed nation as large and wealthy as America at the hands of well-armed global neighbors like Russia, China, Saudi Arabia...

The lowest denominator to which the first nation, capable of imposing consequence of note, is willing to stoop is that to which all others must debase themselves if they do not want to suffer those repercussions. Imagine Russia were the only nation to develop an army. It is huge, well trained and managed... has nukes. How long would it be before someone there got the brilliant idea that expanding its territories is called for, whether by reason, need, or manifest destiny? I would not give it ten minutes. They then run roughshod over the world, killing, raping, looting... you know, the things we humans do so well and with such predictable devotion.

Therefore, not wanting to fall to the predators time and again and possibly facing extinction as a population and culture, the other nations follow suit in the interest of maintaining parity. The result can be nothing other than an endless spiraling into the pit of devolutionary rot. It simply cannot be avoided - at least not as of this writing. One question this raises is, "does the pit have a bottom?". While I do not know the answer, I suspect that it does. If so, the next question becomes, "what happens when you hit that bottom?", to which my unequivocal answer is, "nothing good". But I digress.

We are, then, faced with the choice of addressing reality or fleeing it. The progressive Weakman flees for all his skinny stilts will carry him, ensconcing himself in his world of bunnies, light, and unicorn poo. The unremitting liberty idealist acts similarly. While I grant that his vision is far and away saner than that of his opposing analog, it remains sufficiently remote a possibility, given human nature and current circumstance that he becomes the Weakman analog not in the sense of grasping for the ideal, but of expecting it.

Somewhere in there swims the real world, the solution to whose problems must be practicable, if they are to be solutions at all. That is where the Weakmen fail with such fiery spectacle and misery: they cleave to their masturbatory fantasies of social justice and other political porn with an unstinting and deeply violent refusal to consider that maybe even the smallest sliver of that for which they pine, demand, and throw tantrums might not be practically attainable. They want it all, want it now, and want someone else to make it happen. A similar hazard waits in ambush for the liberty lover who turns his back to the practical difficulties of the world as it currently exists.

This, then, brings us full circle to reality and the question of how to best and most effectively deal with it such that the circumstance and status of our liberties improves, rather than further deteriorating. The momentum of Empire is nearly as great as that of the planet itself. Try stop the earth from rotating from one moment to the next. Not going to happen, and if it did calamity would be the only possible result. It took us thousands of years to come to this sad pass. It will likely take far longer than our lifetimes to put things back to rights.

Only fools call for an Article V convention. They want their changes NOW, fully blind to the possibility that they might lose the little they have managed to retain were such an event to be held. I am a purist, as a close friend reminds me often, implying the perfect as being the enemy of the good. I don't quite subscribe to that position, but there is a kernel of validity there, suggesting that a more practicable approach to governance is highly recommended by reason.

The Constitution is weak in a many ways. In a few ways, the Constitution is hideously and deeply flawed. But it nevertheless carries with it the seed potential for restoring men to the greatest degree of liberty possible in a world polluted with the stench and filth of Empire. I fear there is no actual freedom attainable here, but only optimized liberty. My inner purist think that sucks, but my inner pragmatist asks, "what would you prefer, optimal liberty in a world where true freedom is currently not going to happen for the average man, or that which we have now? This is not false dichotomy, either; it is a matter of practical reality and truth in a world where men with guns champ at their bits in anticipation of "go" orders.

The race of men may one day make true freedom a practical reality. They will not do it today. Therefore, take baby steps in the right direction. It is better than taking the tack of the Weakman, stomping and crying in demand of that which ain't gonna happen.

And there is the nuanced answer needed.

In a few ways, the Constitution is hideously and deeply flawed.

The deepest being that it has, de facto, legally authorized the tyranny we now live under.

Whether that negates any support for the good is a question that requires some thought.

Having already thought about it, my answer is no.

Had I been there, I would have been what my screen name states:

An "anti federalist", opposed to adoption of the document, for the reasons stated a hundred time over already.

[Anti Federalist]

If asked that question, what do you think Ron Paul's answer would be?

If given the time, I would think a combination of what osan wrote and what Luctor posted.

It's what I've heard him say myself, in person.

If given the only option of simple up or down, probably yes.

Let me ask this:

At the time of ratification, what would he have been?

A federalist or anti-federalist?

[newbitech]

Am I the only one who voted based on what the Constitution represents and not what was scratched on the papyrus 5000 years ago?

[osan]

I'm requoting your post in its entirety in the hope that additional people will read its very worthy content.

Thank you for the first actual defense of the Constitution I've seen on this site for over a year, other than those I've posted myself.

It is not a defense of the Constitution so much as my making clear the practical need for retaining it at this point in history.

Oh, and I refined and expanded the original post a bit.

[PierzStyx]

No problems are going to be fixed. The main movers and shakers in the liberty movement decided years ago that education campaigns are worthless. If nobody's getting a pro-liberty message out to the electorate, then whoever is in charge after a do-over is going to go back to exactly what we had before, only for really real he's gonna mean it this time you guys seriously. Just like every other do-over in the history of mankind.

The founders had philosophers they consulted before they wrote the founding documents. They didn't come up with these ideas in a vacuum. They came from other people who gave enough of a damn to share their ideas. The current liberty movement is dead, having been pierced through the heart by people who think nobody has any time to spread ideas.



Well, I did my part on Monday by explaining to a friend why the electoral college exists. English is his second language, and he wasn't born here and didn't understand any of this stuff. But it was really this simple: I just told him it makes sense if you consider each state its own separate country. He wanted to know my opinion of whether it should be continued, and I told him about the 17th Amendment and how it was the final blow that killed the original system, and how it doesn't really matter whether we do away with the electoral college because that system has been officially defunct for a century.

This is one of those "illegal aliens" that everyone thinks is hellbent on taking our freedoms away, mind you. If I can get through to one of those devils, when he speaks less than fluent English and I only speak rudimentary Spanish, then we MUST be able to get through to Americans.

But then I remember some of the dumb $#@! I've read here, where people are supposed to know better, and I despair.

I've said it again and again. If people who actually cared about liberty actually got their heads out of their arses and worked to convert Hispanic immigrants then we would see a liberty renaissance. These are people who already know the dangers of socialism- it is the reason they are fleeing their countries of origin and would rather work in a McDonald's here. You just have to help open their eyes to how socialism is connected to everything else. Once you do that, and it isn't that hard from personal experience, everything else begins to follow. There is low hanging fruit here we are ignoring and paying the price for it!

[CCTelander]

I've said it again and again. If people who actually cared about liberty actually got their heads out of their arses and worked to convert Hispanic immigrants then we would see a liberty renaissance. These are people who already know the dangers of socialism- it is the reason they are fleeing their countries of origin and would rather work in a McDonald's here. You just have to help open their eyes to how socialism is connected to everything else. Once you do that, and it isn't that hard from personal experience, everything else begins to follow. There is low hanging fruit here we are ignoring and paying the price for it!

I've said this many times myself. Usually falls upon deaf ears. Won't speculate as to why.

[jllundqu]

Trick answer... I support the IDEAS enshrined in the Constitution. The people who have $#@!ed it all up.... that's another question/debate entirely.