Happy Birthday, Ron Paul!

 Today is the 90th Birthday of Ron Paul, M.D.

Ron Paul Congressional portrait, 2007.

I was already in alignment with Ron Paul's views before I became aware of him in the early 2000s, through his articles on websites I frequented. Paul was a Republican Congressman from Texas, and I vainly hoped he'd run an insurgent campaign against President Bush in the 2004 primaries. 

Paul did make a splash by running in the 2008 GOP primaries. As I wrote in 2016, "The Ron Paul Revolution started on a Republican Presidential debate stage in the spring of 2007, when Rudy Giuliani tried to disparage Ron Paul's foreign policy views. It backfired, and many people took Ron Paul's side." (The moment is captured here.) My collection of essays from this time is called Ron Paul is a Nut (And So Am I).

Dr. Paul ran again in 2012, and with his libertarian ideas reaching more people, presidential candidate Gary Johnson received record numbers of votes for the Libertarian Party in 2012 and 2016. Unfortunately, however, a significant portion of Paul's supporters didn't take his message of peace and liberty to heart. Although Paul was attractive as an "anti-Establishment" candidate, his populist supporters jumped onto the (also seemingly anti-Establishment) Trump movement that targeted the "woke," trans people, and immigrants, none of whom started America's wars or exploded the national debt.

Ron Paul's revolution, however, will never die. It existed long before him, under different names, of course, and will exist long after he's gone. The movement for peace and the movement for liberty are one and the same, and will always be with us.

Peace and liberty are the same issue. This is reflected in something Paul said, "Every time we write a law to control private behavior, we imply that somebody has to arrive with a gun." Paul said this while opposing a proposed Constitutional Amendment to ban desecration of the flag of the United States, but the point applies to every law. If you want a law passed, that means you want armed cops to enforce it. Armed cops represent the threat of violence, which is violence.

Gracearchy's Jim Babka often asks if your neighbor is breaking your leg or stealing your purse. He's paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson, who wrote, "The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

Ron Paul was asking if you would support violence against your neighbors if they burn the national flag. Yes? Then you're not living in peace with your neighbor.

Apply that to anything your neighbor does that doesn't harm or endanger others without their consent. Are they selling sex? Drugs? Weapons? Jars of jam that the government hasn't inspected? 

What if they seek work for cash only? Or set up a shop without a license?

If you would pass a law - impose violence - to stop what your neighbors are doing, then you're not living peacefully with them.

"But what they're doing is bad for the community (or the country, or society)!"

That only means "I have decided to feel threatened by my neighbor's behavior even though it does me no harm. They should suffer to assuage my irrational fears."

We live in a world made up of nation-states. These are groups of armed gangs that recognize each other's boundaries and internal affairs. It's not ideal, but the best hope for world peace is for each to stay out of the affairs of the others.

If you insist on using violence to stop the peaceful behavior of your next-door neighbor, what chance does the world have for peace among nations? Nations that worship all kinds of gods, that have all sorts of customs we find strange? Or bad? Evil?

The desire to control your neighbor through the threat of State violence is the same desire to eradicate "evil" throughout the world. But it is neither peaceful nor benevolent to threaten people who pose no threat to you.

That's why Ron Paul wrote in a 2007 letter to the Union Leader: "It is not we non-interventionists who are isolationists. The real isolationists are those who impose sanctions and embargoes on countries and peoples across the globe because they disagree with the internal and foreign policies of their leaders. The real isolationists are those who choose to use force overseas to promote democracy, rather than seek change through diplomacy, engagement, and by setting a positive example."

May we have laws that don't intervene in my neighbor's business? And may we have a foreign policy that doesn't intervene in conflicts far away from us.

Happy 90th Birthday, Ron Paul!

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James Leroy Wilson writes The MVP Chase (subscribe) and JL Cells (subscribe). Thank you for your subscriptions and support! You can contact James for writing, editing, research, and other work at jamesleroywilson-at-gmail.com.