Mitt Romney is now the Republican Party\u2019s presidential nominee.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ok, technically <\/em>he isn\u2019t.\u00a0 At 1,024 delegates, he is twenty short of the number needed in order to formally secure the nomination.\u00a0<\/p>\n Like I said, Romney is <\/em>the GOP nominee.<\/p>\n No other candidate comes close, and even though my candidate, Ron Paul, hasn\u2019t officially withdrawn from the race as of yet, at a mere 143 delegates, it is axiomatic that he most assuredly will not <\/em>be our next president.<\/p>\n Romney is a Massachusetts center-left politician.\u00a0 No two ways about it. He is anything but the conservative that he is now styling himself to be. Not by any stretch could he ever credibly be confused with a friend of liberty.<\/p>\n Still, he is preferable to Barack Obama.\u00a0<\/p>\n Anybody <\/em>is preferable to Barack Obama.\u00a0 And because Romney is somebody, he would make a less damaging president than our current \u201ctransformer-in-chief.\u201d<\/p>\n This is the thesis for which I have argued recently.\u00a0 As a consequence, I have been excoriated by my fellow Ron Paul supporters.<\/p>\n For the most part, I have been on the receiving end of two criticisms.\u00a0 First: not only isn\u2019t there the proverbial dime\u2019s worth of difference between Romney and Obama, the former may actually be worst than the latter.\u00a0 After all, Romney is more militaristic than Obama.\u00a0 Second: even if Romney is \u201cthe lesser of two evils,\u201d evil is still evil and a vote for Romney, then, is a vote for evil.<\/p>\n The first proposition is false.\u00a0 I have already explained why, given Obama\u2019s aspirations to \u201cfundamentally transform\u201dAmerica into a bastion of \u201cSocial Justice,\u201d he is significantly worst forAmerica in both the short and long terms than either Romney or anyone else who may have been his opponent.\u00a0<\/p>\n However, for argument\u2019s sake, let\u2019s just say that the charge is accurate and Obama really is not <\/em>as bad as Romney.\u00a0 If so, then perhaps prudence would suggest that we vote for Obama.\u00a0 We must crawl before we can run.\u00a0 If the objective is to restore constitutional government (liberty), then we must do what we can to decelerate the rate at which America is hemorrhaging liberties.<\/p>\n The second charge is just as problematic as the first.\u00a0 \u201cA choice for the lesser of two evils is still a choice for evil.\u201d This is a logically sound statement.\u00a0 But so what?\u00a0 So is \u201cAll green unicorns are colored objects.\u201d\u00a0 Is this <\/em>choice under these <\/em>constraints a choice for <\/em>evil?\u00a0 This is the question that my critics must address.\u00a0<\/p>\n Certainly, from their perspective and mine, to vote for Romney is make a choice that is, at a minimum, far from ideal.\u00a0 It is indeed to \u201csettle,\u201d as one Facebook friend put it.\u00a0 To vote for Romney is to compromise.\u00a0 <\/em>But compromise what<\/em>?<\/p>\n As far as my fellow Paul supporters are concerned, the answer is obvious: in voting for Romney, I am guilty of compromising my \u201cprinciples.<\/em>\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Not so fast.\u00a0 \u201cPrinciples\u201d is a word mired in ambiguity.\u00a0 We wouldn\u2019t know this given the ease\u2014the thoughtlessness\u2014with which we toss it around.\u00a0 But it is true just the same.\u00a0 Without getting into all of this, it seems clear enough that Paul supporters allege that if I vote for Romney, I will sacrifice my convictions, those things in which I have always claimed to really believe.\u00a0 This, in turn, is but another way of saying that I will expose myself to have been a fake all along, a man without any real conviction.\u00a0<\/p>\n But nothing could be further from the truth.<\/p>\n I believe today what I have always believed.\u00a0 I believe that a country with more liberty is better than a country with less liberty.\u00a0 I believe that of the contestants that have been in this race from the beginning, Ron Paul is liberty\u2019s greatest advocate.\u00a0 This is why I will vote for him in the New Jersey primary come this week. But Paul is not going to be a viable alternative to Obama come November because he is no longer going to be in the race then. Romney will be that alternative and Romney is less an enemy to liberty than is Obama (see above).<\/p>\n Circumstances have changed; my beliefs haven\u2019t.\u00a0 So, in order to advance my beliefs, I must make radically non-ideal choices between severely constrained options.<\/p>\n This is called compromise. It is what the mature and wise apostle of liberty has always recognized as a function of the virtues of temperance and prudence.\u00a0 \u201cPrinciples\u201d aren\u2019t what\u2019s being compromised, however.\u00a0 The prudential person forgoes all of he wants at a given moment <\/em>so that rather than get none of it, he gets some of it.\u00a0<\/p>\n Neither is it correct that the person who votes for Romney \u201cchooses evil.\u201d\u00a0 Even if it is true that Romney is an evil, my choice is not primarily for <\/em>Romney as it is against <\/em>Obama.\u00a0 This is a morally relevant distinction.<\/p>\n Not long ago, my dear grandmother passed away.\u00a0 She had a surgery from which she never regained consciousness.\u00a0 While unconscious, the vast majority of her breathing was sustained by a ventilator. The doctors informed us that she was dying, but slowly, uncomfortably.\u00a0 If we took her off the ventilator, she would die, but more quickly.\u00a0 To prevent her from suffering, they would administer a morphine drip.\u00a0 My family and I opted for this latter plan.<\/p>\n Did we choose<\/em> for my grandmother to die?\u00a0 We wanted for her to live! The choice we made was a choice to end her suffering.\u00a0 We knew, though, that her death would be a foreseen, if unintended, consequence of our decision.<\/p>\n Did those of America\u2019s Founders who opposed slavery choose <\/em>slavery when they \u201ccompromised\u201d on the question of slavery in order to forge a new nation \u201cconceived in liberty?\u201d\u00a0 Did they choose evil?<\/p>\n Rand Paul, clearly a big fan of his father\u2019s, had already announced that he will support the GOP nominee, regardless of who he is.\u00a0 <\/em>Is he guilty of compromising his principles or choosing evil? Or what if his father decides to endorse Romney?\u00a0 What we will we say then?\u00a0 By becoming Republican Party office holders, both Pauls have already endorsed this party.\u00a0 Have they chosen evil or foregone principle?<\/p>\n Finally, to my fellow Ron Paul supporters, Fb friends, and critics, ask yourselves this: in not voting for either presidential nominee, are you <\/em>not forsaking your <\/em>\u201cprinciples,\u201d are you <\/em>not \u201cchoosing evil?\u201d\u00a0 A choice to refrain from voting is still a choice.\u00a0 Refusing to vote, or insisting on voting for third party candidates whose percentage of the popular vote promises to be negligible will not only fail abysmally to mitigate the erosion of liberty.<\/p>\n It could very well hasten its demise.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Mitt Romney is now the Republican Party\u2019s presidential nominee.\u00a0 Ok, technically he isn\u2019t.\u00a0 At 1,024 delegates, he is twenty short of the number needed in order to formally secure the nomination.\u00a0 Like I said, Romney is the GOP nominee. No other candidate comes close, and even though my candidate, Ron Paul, hasn\u2019t officially withdrawn from…<\/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-481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n