Ron Paul Promises Nothing

This article was originally published by americanchronicle.com on Jan. 7th, 2008

Politicians make a lot of promises to a lot of people. That’s just the nature of the beast. They pander to the lowest common denominator in order to try to get votes. The politicians in this presidential contest are no different. They make promises they may or may not be able to keep. They promise to give to the people what they think the people want, a chicken in every pot, if you will. They realize that people who are starving will cast a vote for someone who promises them food, even if that person is not a farmer and knows nothing about the business of providing food to the population. It does not matter to them that in order to deliver their promise they will have to steal the chickens from one who has worked all his life to acquire them. Nor does it matter to them if they are unable to deliver on their promise so long as there is someone else to blame, and there is always someone else to blame. These politicians will promise what they believe their constituents want to hear, and if they find they are wrong they will turn and promise the opposite. They are not concerned with principle, only with obtaining votes. The only exception to this rule is Ron Paul. Ron Paul promises nothing. He states his positions and sticks to them, and he has the voting record to prove it.

Some presidential candidates, particularly the Democrats, have promised free health care to those who can’t afford to pay. This is called socialized medicine. What they haven’t told you is that this system has proven to be flawed in many other countries. What many may not realize is that they are being promised something for nothing, and one can hardly ever get something for nothing. Someone has to pay. Free health care is not really free and we will all be forced to pay through higher taxes. But that’s not the only problem. Once in charge of your health care, the government would start removing your options. In an effort to keep costs down they would regulate what procedures you could and couldn’t have and what treatments could be prescribed. Waiting times for certain procedures would probably increase to the point where some might start to die as they wait their turn. Incentives for doctors would be removed as competition between health care providers would be non existent as the government homogenized the system. Choices would be fewer, customer service would suffer, and the costs would increase rather than decrease, only we wouldn’t realize this because the government would be stealing from all of us equally to pay for it. This is the promise of free health care, the promise the Democrats are touting. Ron Paul promises nothing of the sort. He wishes to get the government out of health care, allow freedom in the health marketplace, and let you and your doctor determine how to best take care of your health.

More disturbing than this, however, is what the Republicans are promising. They are simply promising more of the same. They are promising to keep our present wars going until sometime in the future. They are promising more death and destruction. Ron Paul promises nothing of the sort. He promises we will have nothing to do with wars of aggression. He promises we will have nothing to do with entangling alliances. The founders of the United States of America felt this way. That is because they knew way back then that many wars were not fought for meritorious reasons. Even back then wars enriched the elite at the cost of the children and fathers of the lower classes. The only honorable war is the war fought in defense.

I watched on Youtube a couple nights ago a rerun of a Fox News debate where Mike Huckabee discussed honor. He asserts that we cannot leave Iraq until we can leave with honor. When he spoke of the importance of honor it was reminiscent of the Japanese soldiers’ doctrine in WWII. It makes one wonder if Mike Huckabee understands the meaning of the word honor. The war in Iraq has lost all credibility since the lies justifying our involvement have been exposed and any pretext of self defense removed. What honor is there in killing civilians trying to protect their homes? What honor is there in continuing to pollute their country with depleted uranium? What honor is there in fighting with the most sophisticated modern weapons against a people using the most basic and simply trying to regain self determination? What honor is there in destroying lives and property for a few to profit? None of this is worthy of praise. The only vestige of honor we have left to save is the honor of leaving to let the Iraqi people tend to their own business. The only action worthy of praise now is to apologize for our mistakes and leave Iraq and its natural resources to its people. When we leave, at least it can be said that we are finally doing the right thing. Is honor more important than doing the right thing? It seems to me that Mike Huckabee confused the word honor with the word pride. It is long past time for us as a society to forget about pride and realize that the people of Iraq do not want our soldiers occupying their land, just as we would not want foreign troops on our soil. Ron Paul does not promise victory, he promises nothing more than our troops returning home with their lives and limbs intact.

The Republicans also promise to keep taxing you. They make promises about cutting taxes and saving programs like Medicare and Social Security, but they make it clear that they want to keep taxing you. They call for tax reform and implementation of programs such as the FairTax, but that is still taxation. They have made promises as to how they will help the people of this country economically, most of the promises have no real substance. Ron Paul promises he will do all he can to eliminate the IRS and the income tax and replace it with, nothing. He promises to do his best to shrink federal bureaucracies down to, nothing. He promises that he will do his best to make sure the federal government provides nothing for you, but it will also take nothing from you. In this way you will be better able to determine for yourself how you wish to spend, or save your money. He even promises that he will do his best to see to it that our current form of fiat money is replaced with nothing except gold and silver backed currencies, which is something of value unlike the promises backing the Federal Reserve Notes. In that way the value of your money will be maintained and may even increase as time goes by, rather than decreasing. Think about how much money you need to retire today as opposed to how much one may have needed even two decades ago. No other candidate running for president even touches upon that issue.

Never before has the promise of nothing meant so much. All the other candidates running for president in both major parties promise to maintain the status quo. They will do nothing to end the corruption that has rotted Washington DC to its core. They will do nothing to restore the rights taken from the American people by the regime now in power. They will do nothing to bring peace to the world and have promised to maintain foreign policies that may drag us into even more devastating conflicts. Ron Paul may promise nothing to everyone, but his candidacy has already delivered real change, and his presidency would deliver a trend toward freedom at the very least. The foreign policies he would pursue would show the world that a revolution can be won in a peaceful manner and that we can all live together in this world without fighting for domination over each other. This is something worthy of praise. This is something we can honor.