I never said he was in favor of anarchy or had an anarcho view (if i remembered correctly, a year or two ago, in a debate on this forum on the topic on whether Paul is an anarchist, I was actually labeled as being ignorant for not accepting the ‘fact that Paul is an anarchist’) … what I am saying is that he does not take the constitution as serious as what he claims to mainstream media. But I’ll say this, whenever he knows his audience is of a anarcho or voluntaryist, he doesn’t even mention the constitution as much as when he is talking in mainstream media or general audiences.
But in his new book, on the section on Democracy, he throws in a little Spooner to make the claim that no American has consented with the constitution. And he says, that while an interesting point, it would not make good headway at this stage of time. but by saying ‘at this stage’, he is merely implying that this claim can be used later on, once the movement has a better stance, right? or else why would he put ‘at this stage’, if he is for the validity of the constitution, why not just flat out say that such a claim against the constitution is not valid or sound. He is clearly not denying the claim’s legitimacy at all, he is merely saying that currently he chooses to focus on another claim to make headway. And in the footnotes, he goes on to say that Spooner is worth studying and he lists Lysander Spooner Reader as a good source.
If he is a constitutionalist, then he does a very bad job at defending that stance, especially by quoting such anti-constitution intellectuals like Spooner and by having anti-constitutionalists like T.Woods, L. Rockwell, and W. Block working for him as editors or advisors.
“Uh. Okay. So, how do you define what a “Libertarian” is? Again, I have to assume you are meaning that with a lower-case ‘l’ but keep using uppercase for some reason.”
How do I, meaning just me, defined what Libertarianism means? Well I would define it as following the NAP, a respect for human life, some sense of benevolence, free-market ideals. What it really comes down to for me is that Libertarians should be at the very least followers and believers of the NAP. I think there are implicit behaviors to foster a free society such as free market ideals, charitability, respect but I consider myself a thick libertarian.
“Perhaps you should read down a little further…like, maybe the 14th Amendment.”
Ok, and what in the 14th amendment defuses my comment of individuals not having protection from state or local government?
“No one who understood anything about the Constituiton made any sort of argument like “well if you don’t like it, you can leave.” Perhaps you should watch this.”
I could be wrong but isn’t this a Scotsman fallacy? Please don’t forget to comment on my statements about Ron Paul being a voluntarist. I’d very much like to hear what you have to say about that. Also my comment about the size of government being voted on by citizens and my comment asking why we need the Constitution and not the Articles of Confederation. Jeez you actually missed a lot of what I wrote.
"The Federal goverment is like a thousand pound gorilla bound by the chains of the Constitution. This gorilla has been shown throughout history to be sadistic, destructive, and cruel. This gorilla is slowly coming loose of its chains. I’m the person saying, “lets fix those chains, then get rid of the gorilla.” you’re the one saying, “Lets get rid of the chains and try to get rid of the gorilla.”
Which of us is being more practical?"
No where we differ in this matter is you thinking the gorilla is still in the chains and I think it is running free. It has been for several centuries.
The “conspiracists” say the Birth Certificate must be a forgery, because the digital file is in layers, and because certain text elements are of a different quality compared to adjacent text elements, indicating that it had undergone additional processing.
The “official story” is that Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software generated the layers in the digital file.
The truth is that neither explanation fits the facts. The digital file released by the White House is very very interesting. The file is not only separated into layers, but bizarre layers. The Background layer is merged with a ghostly white outline from some of the text. While it is true that OCR software can generate layers that were not in the original scan, it is impossible that it would create this ghosting effect.
However, it also makes no sense as an imcompetent forgery. They could create a perfect forgery if they wanted to, trust me. Besides, the anamolies do not match what would be expected in a sloppy forgery. Again, the ghostly white outline of the text would not occur, and the text would all match.
Thinking critically, and understanding the software at play, leads me to conclude that this birth certificate was intentionally edited, in this bizarre fashion, precisely for the purpose of generating a “conspiracy theory”, while maintaining a plausible sounding official explanation. No other narrative fits the facts.
Perhaps the part that says “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
No, what I’m saying is this “well you could just move out of the country” thing is basically a strawman argument. There is virtually no one who actually uses that as a response to claims like the one you made. The only reason I put the qualifier on there in the first place is because I’m sure someone somewhere at some point in time has thrown out that kind of statement, but that doesn’t make it a legitimate argument worth pointing to just so you have something to knock down.
Honestly I really didn’t feel like trying to wade through your run-on paragraph and wasting time trying to make heads or tails of it. If you’re not even going to bother making what you write graphically legible you shouldn’t get all whiny when people don’t respond to every single thing you’ve jammed into a 1000 word paragraph.
But feel free to read my latest post before this one, as a decent amount of it was more or less directed at you.
I don’t presume to know what the man think’s, but from the speeches and the direct questions I have asked him, he does not hint as much.
I would take anyone calling you ignorant on any matter with a grain of salt. No single Individual or even group on Individual’s has a monopoly of knowledge or awareness about what another completely seperate Individual think’s within his own mind.
I haven’t read his new book, due to lack of fund’s and time. I’ve been buying silver like crazy lately thank’s to it being on sale recently. With that in mind I can not directly comment on the content’s of that book.
I would have to say from at this point without having read that portion that you are mentioning, that Paul would be more of the Rationalist or the Individualist of Anarchist’s. Which would mean he is not opposed to the Constitution, but would support it if it was treated rationally rather than a political point scoring tool as it is more commonly these day’s. This based on how times he has said, “that if we are going to follow the Constitution”, like statements.
My personal view some of those ardent anti-Constitutionalist’s themselves have their own fault’s. I would say the Constitutionalist’s have more fault’s, but then again, I’m an Individualist, and find that agreeing with any one lone Individual 100% will lead you away from being yourself.
My main point with using Ron Paul tyoes of Libertarian’s was directed to those that are full Minarchist, and follow Paul’s more public stances. Not to say that Ron Paul was directly not one of these types. In light of what you have said, it’s obvious that he’s a person that can appeal to a larger portion of those that fall into the Libertarian types, than anyone else I know of. Either way, even being an Individualist, I will still check his box or write him in. Yes, I still vote, because it’s part of my feel good action’s that I enjoy doing.