’ Go here to learn how to quote."
Thanks but I like my system better.
“Ron Paul admits he is a voluntarist. [1] [2]”
Well then I see his message as either confused or disingenuous. Ron Paul believes that the Constitution should be a decisive factor in the running of the American government. You can see this in Chapter 3 of his work The Revolution: A Manifesto. Yet how is the Constitution voluntary in any way? Instead of having the nonsensical statement of “If you don’t like how America is run, you can leave,” we now have the nonsensical statement of “If you don’t like how [Insert State Name Here] is run then you can leave.” The 10th amendment might protect states against the Federal level but it doesn’t protect the individuals from the state or local level. So by fostering this fetish towards the Constitution, is Ron Paul REALLY being a voluntarist? Unless we all voluntarily declare our explicit consent to the Constitution and those who deny it are not coerced into leaving their property then I don’t think that constitutes voluntarism. If Ron Paul wants to run things as status quo but merely a change in the size of government then again I don’t think that is voluntarism. Now it could be that Ron Paul is merely using the Constitution as a means of achieving a voluntary society and while I am all for finding various methods of disproving the necessity of the state, why use the Constitution which is really nothing more then paper? If it is for the image of small government then why not utilize the Articles of Confederation? Why utilize the Constitution in a manner which incites nationalistic fervor? This very mentality of American greatness was one of the impasses for the current foreign policy of this country. To paraphrase Garet Garrett it is the language of power and empire. He seems so focused on stopping AT the Constitution that I wonder if he would ever go beyond it and its not as if the mass of his followers are more fervent in their desire for more liberty that they are going beyond the Constitution. They stop at the Constitution also leaving a glaring inconsistency that I’m honestly surprised hasn’t been exploited yet for why is small government any different in principle then big government? It’s the arbitrary setting of lines. If people can vote to establish government then why is it wrong for them to vote for government to give out free basic necessities? Well maybe because it’s in the Constitution one might add but the Constitution can be changed. It can be amended. So this “small government, more liberty” motif only works if you have a static cultural outlook toward government. If Democrats were suddenly able to introduce an amendment that in some way expanded government and it passed. What would you say then? No fair? The Constitution is about limited government? Ron Paul and his supporters put all their faith in this document that through American history has been at best benign and at worse useless. What good is such an avenue of approach? It is almost sisyphean.
" If you meant Ron Paul isn’t “libertarian” (little ‘l’) enough to be “libertarian”, I’d like to know how one does qualify."
Well it depends on who you talk to in order to understand what it means to be a Libertarian. I think a definition that both thick and thin Libertarians can agree on or at least believe is a main tenet is the preaching and practicing of the non-aggression principle (NAP). If there is more to Libertarianism then that is still debated.