alt.education

If McCain has the Republican nomination virtually locked up, why do some of
us still campaign actively for Ron Paul? Well, we can look at it from
either of two salient perspectives, each both determinative & definitive
within its own sphere. While the most important may be the moral
perspective--the question of a sworn obligation to uphold the Constitution
of the United States, we will begin with the pragmatic perspective:

While McCain may still appear fairly strong in the polls, the tide of
contemporary history is clearly against him. There can be little doubt but
that a McCain nomination means a Republican defeat in November. Why?
Because he has pledged to continue the worst elements of the Bush foreign
policy--the folly that refuses to celebrate the fact that we already won the
War against Iraq, but which seeks to reengineer Iraqi values and culture,
while undermining our friends in the other 98% of the Islamic world--as
witness the election in Pakistan yesterday; the folly which forgets how
"well" the three plus century British experiment in reengineering Irish
society worked; the folly that is destroying the value of the American
dollar; the folly that cannot grasp that its avowals are insulting to any
patriotic, self-respecting adherent to the continuity of any other tribe,
race or nation on earth.

Public support for our continued presence in Iraq has already fallen to
about 30%, with all the reasons for that decline from a once clear majority
still in place; with every reason for a continued decline between now and
November. That the policy was conceived out of a personal wish list--rather
than the long term interests of America--is made all the more clear by the
President's current trip through large areas of Africa; where he promises
billions of dollars, that have never been appropriated; billions of dollars
that do not even yet exist; billions of dollars for projects vainly & vainly
intended to make the President look like an international benefactor--a
poseur in the fashion of an American Caligula--but which serve no
Constitutional purpose whatsoever; yet projects, which once funded out of
increased public debt, will further contribute to the rapid decline of the
American Dollar. (And projects, which immediately followed the signing of a
staggering completely deficit funded waste, promising to "stimulate" the
American economy, in the fairy tale--pun intended--manner of the Lord
Keynes, the Fabian Socialist economic quack, of the 20th Century.)

No McCain is not the promisor, but he has hopelessly committed to the Bush
madness overseas. McCain will bring the Republican Party to a defeat
rivaling the almost 2 to 1 drubbing that the Democrats took in 1920, in the
fallout over the League of Nation's Issue. Like our Iraqi policy, the
League supporters started out with an overwhelming level of popular support.
They simply could not hold up under the scrutiny of informed debate.

Yet, there is another, related but more subtle, problem now beginning to
fester. The vote for less stability in Pakistan, yesterday, raises very
serious questions as to the Bush/McCain policy and McCain's well known
explosive & impulsive temper. There have already been semi-hysterical
threats about Iran's modest nuclear program. If McCain would wax truculent
over the notion that a presently non existent Iranian atomic bomb might be
turned over to terrorists, how much greater might be the McCain truculence
over Pakistan's known nuclear arsenal. Remember--my older friends--the
image of the little girl reaching down to pick a flower before the nuclear
explosion went off, used against Barry Goldwater in 1964? The Democrats
will really crank up the war scare against McCain.

But that said, what about the other perspective? The moral issue? How can
any man or woman of principle; anyone who understands the necessity of honor
in discharging the duty to preserve the institutions of a free society, vote
for a continuation of policies that ignore the mandates of the Constitution;
that ignore the Constitutional limitations on their power, even as they
violate the Constitutional mandates and delegations specifically intended to
secure the value of our dollar, and the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves
and our posterity? Yes, McCain is a certain loser; but there is more to
this
than one election.

No, Ron Paul will not get the Republican nomination. But he has framed the
issues: http://pages.prodigy.net/krtq73aa/decision.htm. Every vote for Ron
Paul is a statement of principle. It is not the end; rather a new beginning
in the ongoing campaign of Conservatives throughout the past 85 years, to
return America to the wise course that made us all we have been that was
good, all that made us succeed; that unlocked the power of a free society, a
free market; that made us the most respected people on earth; that set an
example that others might seek to emulate, rather than resent and despise.

The really pathetic thing about the present course in Washington is that it
is not only ill conceived and foolish to an extreme; the perpetrators do not
even grasp that it has already failed! The President just promised in
Rwanda that he would help train their security forces to prevent further
genocide. And yet the genocide in Rwanda grew directly out of the Dean Rusk
foreign policy of the 1960s, which promoted "One Man/one vote" Democracy
within the old Colonial borders in Africa; which ran roughshod over the
reality that people are not interchangeable. George Bush has proven a
disaster for Republicans at home. He is certainly no answer to those who
love freedom abroad.

William Flax
Cincinnati, Ohio
Goldwater & Reagan Republican