The Case for Ron Paul

While standing on stage with people like Rudy Giuliani and Mike Huckabee answering questions about political positions Ron Paul can't help but appear intellectually alluring. Watching the Republican Debate last night I began to understand what Ron Paul supporters see in the man. He is an actual conservative: The sort of person who promotes small government, fiscal responsibility, and a foreign policy of "none". He's the sort of person I would unquestioningly vote for provided that he dismissed that whole "god" thing.

Of course, Ron Paul maintains unreasonable notions about how the United States government ought to function. While "crazy" may be a bit of a stretch Ron Paul does have some odd, oudated ideas of how our government ought to function.

But are these ideas necessarily bad or detrimental? I do not think so.

The government of the United States is an experiment; the founders did not know what would come of the system they put in place. They had ideas and theories based upon the writings of dipshits about how best to govern a society but no real historical attempt to work from. So they wrote a Constitution and let the experiment begin.

The problem is that people forget this and cling to the notion that how things are somehow indicates how things truly ought to be. Whether by clinging to the past, present, or a concept of the future we construct notions of normalcy and "right" to which we cling. It's a coping mechanism based upon our need for permanence. For example, initially people were opposed to Social Security; now we are in dire fear of it failing. What changed? We grew accustomed to having it. But this embrace of fabricated normalcy is not necessarily the best way of existing in the world. There could be other, better, systems of government. Change could be a good thing.

Which is why I would really like to see Ron Paul elected president. I want to know what would happen if we had no IRS, returned to the gold standard, and pulled literally all of our military personnel back to the United States. I'm curious. Sure, some things could break and we might experience a few problems in the transition. But we survived George W. Bush. Do you really think that ridding ourselves of the IRS would be more problematic than the War in Iraq?

If things somehow go completely to shit then in four years we'll elect another John Jackson or Jack Johnson from either of the two established political parties and so regain our monotonous, acceptable system. Or, hell, most of the people running for president right now will still be alive. We could just declare a mulligan and let these guys and gal go back to lying to us.

So why not let Ron Paul run through the government for four years deleting, cutting, and trimming? Why not get rid of the IRS and then bring it back in four years if we really need to? Why not try out the whole gold standard thing for a few years? Why not get rid of affirmative action, eminent domain, and the war on drugs? Are we really in such a delightful, joyous, and perfect situation that some Ron Paul provided change would be life-shatteringly problematic?

I don't necessarily agree with everything Ron Paul thinks. But I am quite bored. So I say we elect Ron Paul president and see what happens. Because Ron Paul has one thing to offer that no other candidate has:

Ron Paul would make life interesting.