Ron Paul as the New Ronald Reagan
By Joseph Andrew Settanni
Statecraft and statesmanship are practically nonexistent today. Dr. Ron Paul has the qualities of integrity of a Sen. Robert Taft as opposed, for instance, to the slyness and veniality of a Dwight Eisenhower. He is radically different from the rest of the pack pursuing the presidency. Limbaugh, Hannity, Levin, Beck, Savage, and many others have, often backhandedly, admitted this both essential and undeniable truth.
Paul is, as ought to be realized, the new Ronald Wilson Reagan for this present era because, among other solidly indicative reasons, the Republican Party hierarchy, the political establishment, certainly detests him, as it did Reagan.
They preferred George H. W. Bush; many or most people forget that rather significant fact. Unlike the rest of the current candidates, Paul, as did Reagan (the outsider), actually believes in the US Constitution in terms of its original concept, meaning the central and important effort to limit government.
The primary purpose of a written, as opposed to an unwritten, constitution is to create a political order of circumscribed, meaning limited, powers, which is the very precise definition of a truly constitutional government qua governance existing under an actually written fundamental law of government, a constitution.
What exists today is a basically post-Constitutional regime of (ideologically-oriented) power that is fundamentally governed by a fourfold process of: unconstitutional judicial legislation, executive fiat called executive orders, ever expanding bureaucratic structures seen to be bloated agencies, and congressional legislation, upheld by cognate committees, which feeds into the first three named sources of power.
All presents itself as an incestuous lust for keeping and expanding Federal power without any real limits. Paul keenly recognizes this terrible situation that favors the welfare-warfare State that he, in fact, adamantly opposes; he has, moreover, a demonstrated Reaganite contempt for Big Government and belief in old-fashioned American individualism, what real Americanism used to mean in this country.
A cleansing force and attitude is tremendously needed, in this nation, to clean out these Augean Stables. All the other candidates are mere moderates, in comparison, when it comes to fighting this Hobbesian Leviathan known as the Federal government. This is not the time for moderation, for compromise, in the always needed fight against statism, against corruption, injustice, oppression, and tyranny run wild.
Compared to what Gingrich or Romney has to offer, the good doctor knows what really ails America. He, the antiestablishment champion capable of statesmanship, brings a constantly fresh breeze to all the arguments and a means of refreshing the political order by not accepting the status quo, or anything like it.
The only genuine alternative to Obama is, thus, Ron Paul (the outsider); of course, one ought not to be surprised that opinion polls might not reflect the fullness of this reality. People, most people, forget that, in 1980, the polls did not yet indicate the later and great Reagan landside against Carter until only a few days before the actual national election.
The absolute and tremendous revulsion against Carter had been secretly seething for years, meaning as far as the national media had been concerned, but it was still real nonetheless; the momentous results of that election had changed an American generation; this was definitely confirmed, of course, in 1984 with yet another monumental victory for Reagan (the antiestablishment champion), not Mondale.
For those who have eyes to see, the enormous parallels with 1980 and Reagan’s (nearly unexpected) ascendency can be politically related to Paul for 2012. The true conservative base of the Republican Party, not the Party hierarchy, abhors statism; the fundamental elements of the Tea Party Movement, equivalent, in many ways, to the Reagan Democrats as an allied popular force set firmly against Big Government, are more solidly in line with Paul’s pro-constitutional government message, not, e. g., Romney’s clearly moderate-to-liberal point of view.
Of course, no politician is perfect; all have flaws; but, politics ought not to be a beauty contest.
Even St. Thomas Aquinas pointed out that the best man to do a job is not necessarily the most virtuous, only the best qualified to succeed in accomplishing what really needs to get done. One ought to never make the best the enemy of the good; constitutionalism, the support for free self-government, requires only good government, not perfectionism nor any attempts at it, as Reagan himself would have agreed.
The right kind of requisite statesmanship needed now can only come from someone who genuinely supports free-market economics (Austrian School of Economics) for creating a vibrantly prosperous economy, the absolutely important need to substantially deregulate the economy and cut taxes, and the added requirement that the American empire be substantially and substantively disestablished.
Domestic interventionism, collectivism at home, and foreign interventionism, a cosmopolitan-collectivist approach abroad, have been and will ever be inextricably, truly indivisibly, linked; one feeds the other, therefore, and vice versa continuously.
And, moreover, this ought to logically become ever better known as a manifest fact of reality. Government, as seen in the course of recorded human history, can be either a useful servant of freedom and liberty for the citizens, or a terrible master of mere subjects of its power. But, what are the implications for proper statecraft, for contemporary America?
Economic-social democracy (read: socialism) and military/foreign adventurism have been intimate companions since at least the time of Prince Otto von Bismarck, a German nationalist, who supported social security legislation to gain the support of the masses, the workers, not because he was a socialist. Democratism, in the United States, is used as an excuse and means for taking, creating, and/or holding on to power. The reality of power politics, therefore, needs to be understood and comprehended.
Though many ugly or stupid epithets have been used against him (as was true of Reagan) to allege that he is politically inept or unfit, Paul easily recognizes, as should be known, the horrible but real political connection existing between the American imperium and the welfare-warfare State; the one ends up necessarily justifying and rationalizing, therefore, the existence and activities of the other, which is why the party establishments of both major political parties deeply detest him. They favor the status quo.
It should be, thus, no real surprise, especially in terms of the appropriate defense of free, constitutional, republican government qua governance. And, isn’t that what genuine “Reaganism” as statesmanship is supposed to have been about in the 1980s?
Conclusion
For 2012, as in 1980, a radical change, which will surely affect this current political generation as was true with Reagan, is so clearly required. Nothing less will do. The various multiplying denunciations of Limbaugh, Hannity, Levin, Beck, Savage, and the rest only add useful credibility to Paul’s status as an unwanted outsider, an antiestablishment figure; he is ready and willing to take on the interests and powers that be for the better protection of traditional, American republican government, not the imperium. He, thus, supports true constitutionalism, not tyranny by whatever euphemism.
Free people historically know that autocracy or its equivalent, in any age, is the norm as to the vast majority of regimes that have ever/will ever exist in this world; in contrast, free government as political order will, thus, always be the radical or exceptional alternative, not the general political rule. The idealism of youth, moreover, naturally finds such radicalism attractive.
As with what was so remarkably true for Reagan, Paul, quite notably, attracts younger people, including those on the college campuses, to his cause to help this nation oppose statism. He knows, furthermore, that the Iron Triangle must be broken: Big Government, Big Business, and Big Labor.
Only Ron Paul, defending the principles of American constitutionalism, deserves the Republican nomination next year, no one else, for the truth is always radical.
And, again, as with Reagan in 1980, it would not be at all very surprising if vast numbers of American voters were virtually silent, until they would speak quite loudly (just a few days before and) on Election Day, in November 2012 (in a then neo-Reaganite landslide).
God save the Republic!
