As of late, Ron Paul has once again been the subject of relentless criticism courtesy of Republican Party pundits.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It is his positions on marriage, \u201crecreational\u201d drugs, and current American foreign policy that invite, not just his detractors\u2019 objections, but their ridicule and even their wrath.\u00a0 In all fairness, it is Paul\u2019s statements in the Republican presidential primary debates\u2014a venue, it must be admitted, that is not readily accommodating of the impassioned Texas congressman\u2019s rather unorthodox beliefs\u2014to which his critics speak.\u00a0 However, given that Paul has authored several reader-friendly books in which he elaborates on his views, if the GOP talking heads were really interested in what he thought, it is reasonable to expect that they would turn to these works.<\/p>\n
So, what does Paul think about the aforementioned topics?<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s take marriage first.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When asked during the New Hampshire debate whether he would support a Constitutional amendment explicitly defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman, Paul replied in the negative.\u00a0 He then followed up by insisting that \u201cgovernment\u201d shouldn\u2019t have anything at all to do with this institution.\u00a0 For this claim, he was excoriated by the likes of Ann Coulter and Michael Medved who exclaimed that Paul\u2019s position would result in an anarchic situation in which property settlements, benefits claims, and the like would be rendered impossible.<\/p>\n
The hysteria with which Coulter and Medved responded to Paul is in keeping with the hysteria that we have come to expect from his Republican opponents.\u00a0 Still, so defective is their reasoning on this score that it is hard to shake the suspicion that it is, at least in part, a function of bad faith.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Paul is not alone among his colleagues and competitors in the primaries in speaking of \u201cgovernment\u201d interchangeably with the federal <\/em>government.\u00a0 In fact, all <\/em>of the candidates have a tendency to do this.\u00a0 And considering that they are all running for the presidency, <\/em>it is to be expected that this should be so.\u00a0 That it is the federal government\u2019s relationship to the institution of marriage with which Paul is principally concerned is born out by the following considerations.<\/p>\n First, it is <\/em>the office of the presidency<\/em> on which he sets his sights.<\/p>\n Second, being the constitutionalist that he is, there can be no doubt that if Paul were president, he would discharge only that narrow set of obligations that the Constitution specifies for holders of office at the federal level.\u00a0 How the individual states decided to treat marriage or any other issue that falls beyond the federal government\u2019s constitutionally delineated jurisdiction is a matter respecting which a President Paul would be indifferent.<\/p>\n Third, again, the issue under question is an amendment to the Constitution <\/em>that would supply a formal definition <\/em>of marriage. \u00a0Since it was immediately upon informing us that he would not <\/em>endorse this amendment that Paul asserted his wish to see government remove itself from the marriage business altogether, anyone with any sensitivity to the context of this exchange should be able to recognize that \u201cthe government\u201d to which he refers is the federal government.<\/p>\n In his newly published Liberty Defined, <\/em>Paul is clear: \u201cUnder our system, the federal government was granted no authority over this issue [of marriage].\u201d\u00a0 As for Coulter\u2019s and Medved\u2019s charge that Paul\u2019s reasoning promises to result in chaos, the much maligned maverick has a reply ready at hand.\u00a0 He says that not unlike parties to all other \u201cvoluntary and consensual agreements,\u201d when marital \u201cdisputes\u201d arise, spouses will have recourse to \u201cthe courts.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 In other words, whether consenting adults want to call their arrangement \u201cmarriage\u201d or not should be beside the point, from the government\u2019s standpoint; when disputes occur, government\u2014its judiciary branch\u2014will adjudicate them.\u00a0<\/p>\n As for drugs, while Paul thinks that governments should never coerce citizens when it comes to such self-regarding conduct as drug use, it is the federal government\u2019s \u201cWar on Drugs\u201d with which he is primarily interested.\u00a0 Here, once more, we turn to Paul in his own words as they appear in Liberty<\/em> Defined. <\/em>\u00a0<\/p>\n First of all, Paul draws heavily from the example of alcohol prohibition and the ill-fated Eighteenth Amendment.\u00a0 That is, he relies upon the federal government\u2019s<\/em> utterly disastrous efforts to proscribe a \u201cpersonal activity.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Paul writes: \u201cAlcohol prohibition was destined to wreak havoc on the American people.\u00a0 It bred lawlessness and underworld criminal syndicates,\u201d and because the alcohol, due to its criminalization, was now less safe, it \u201cled to blindness and death.\u201d\u00a0 When these casualties are added to \u201cthe many\u201d whose lives were extinguished in \u201cthe violence that occurred in\u201d the alcohol\u2019s \u201cdelivery,\u201d the Prohibition Era reveals itself to be a bloody era indeed.\u00a0<\/p>\n But for as big of a failure as the \u201cWar on Booze\u201d undoubtedly was, the War on Drugs is that much worse.\u00a0 The War on Drugs has cost us \u201chundreds of billions of dollars,\u201d to say nothing of the costs in \u201cthe loss of civil liberties\u201d and a crime rate that \u201cfar surpasses the crime related to the fifteen years of alcohol prohibition.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Paul anticipates the day when \u201cthe country will wake up and suddenly decide, as we did in 1933, that prohibition to improve personal behavior is a lost cause [.]\u201d\u00a0 He thinks that this day may come sooner rather than later \u201cbecause of the growing perception that the federal government is inept and that individual states must reassert themselves in order to provide more sensible government to their citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n Paul, you see, has never said that if here were president, he would see to it that drugs are everywhere legalized.\u00a0 He clarifies this in the very first paragraph his chapter on \u201cProhibition.\u201d\u00a0 He writes: \u201cIf there are to be any regulations on the use of certain substances in the United States, it was intended that this should be done by the individual states, not by the federal government.\u201d<\/p>\n Because it is Ron Paul\u2019s position on foreign policy that lies at the core of his Republican opponents\u2019 disdain for him, I will address this issue in full in my next article.<\/p>\n Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.<\/p>\n originally published at The New American<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As of late, Ron Paul has once again been the subject of relentless criticism courtesy of Republican Party pundits.\u00a0 It is his positions on marriage, \u201crecreational\u201d drugs, and current American foreign policy that invite, not just his detractors\u2019 objections, but their ridicule and even their wrath.\u00a0 In all fairness, it is Paul\u2019s statements in the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n