Ron Paul’s treatment by mainstream media, other Republican hopefuls, and the punditry makes me think the W.B. Yeats lines “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world” also describe the year 2012 in the United States. Indeed, Paul’s experience in the nomination campaign suggests U.S. politics lacks reasoned substance, common sense, and an understanding of what America’s Founding Fathers intended.
Open up any newspaper to see the mess America has sunk itself into around the world: for example, facing off with China over a lone, non-American dissident whose safety has no relation to U.S. security. Yet today, Paul’s call for staying out of other people’s wars unless genuine U.S. national interests are at stake is deemed radical, immoral, even anti-American. Amazing.
If elected president, Paul’s most valuable contribution to a prosperous and secure American future might well lie in his application of a noninterventionist foreign policy, following the wishes of George Washington and the other founders.
Before explaining why Paul’s foreign policy would benefit the United States, it is worth rebutting those ill-educated jackasses in politics, the media, and the academy who denigrate the founders as “dead white males.” To them, the modern world is so different from Washington’s time that nothing the founders said or wrote pertains to contemporary foreign-policymaking. Such self-serving and ahistoric attitudes allow their advocates to pursue policies negating the Constitution, piling up debt, and fueling relentless intervention abroad.
Several years ago, Georgetown University’s distinguished professor emeritus Daniel Robinson cogently explained that the founding generation did not prescribe specific policies for unforeseeable future problems, but, rather, conducted a prolonged and profound seminar on “the nature of human nature.” They examined history and their own experiences and devised a set of principles true not only in their own era and in ancient Sparta, but also for the unknowable American future: Human nature never changes; man is not perfectible; individuals and governments must live within their means; man is hard-wired for conflict; and small government, frequent elections, and secure private property best protect liberty. Most crucial today is the principle that foreign interventions when no genuine U.S. interest is at risk will yield lost wars, deep debt, and decreased domestic liberty. These common-sense principles were the key to national security in the early republic and would regain that status in a Paul presidency.
