Sunday, August 15, 2004
You Call This Perspective?!
Ron Paul is a libertarian Republican from Texas whose "Texas Straight Talk" columns are posted on Razormouth.com, and as such are read by my wife and I on a regular basis.
Mr. Paul has, in his latest column, seemed to misjudge the nature of the threat posed by the islamo-fascists abroad. He says at the end of his latest piece
What baffles my mind is that Mr. Paul and his fellow libertarian travelers in arms (including a certain attorney mentioned down below) have a real dilemma on their hands. It seems that they utterly fail to see the real danger posed by the terrorists abroad. It isn't so much that they're seeking control, as much as they are seeking death. What blows my mind is the fact that terrorists WANT TO KILL US!!! Mr. Paul and his fellow libertarians have a warped view of human nature. Hatred, malice, envy, greed, murder are all things the Scripture tells individuals in the early church to put off from themselves because they are a new person in Christ. It is because these islamofacists are of a different religion, they have absolutely no compunction whatsoever with killing as many people as possible and they don't even mess around with honoring civil liberties, in fact, they seek to use our very freedom against us to harm us. What Mr. Paul doesn't do and he SHOULD is to address the question of how does one give the state the tools it needs to apprehend those who would harm us and at the same time, how does one maximize civil liberties at the same time. Answering this basic question hasn't been done by the libertarians and is one reason why I can't join their ranks. The police state needs constant and vigilant oversight to keep its power in proper perspective, but I also want the government to apprehend those who would or have done us harm.
Until libertarians start to address man's completely fallen nature and until they start to answer this simple question of governance, they will continue to be lost and wandering prophets crying in an irrelevant wilderness.
Mr. Paul has, in his latest column, seemed to misjudge the nature of the threat posed by the islamo-fascists abroad. He says at the end of his latest piece
Every new security measure represents another failure of the once-courageous American spirit. The more we change our lives, the more we obsess about terrorism, the more the terrorists have won. As commentator Lew Rockwell of the Ludwig von Mises Institute explains, terrorists in effect have been elevated by our response to 9-11: They are running the country. They determine our civic life. They shape our private life. They decide how public resources are spent. They may dictate who gets to be the next president. It should be obvious that the government doesnt object. Not at all. The government benefits, by getting ever more reason for ever more money and power.
Every generation must resist the temptation to believe that it lives in the most dangerous time in American history. The threat of Islamic terrorism is real, but it is not the greatest danger ever faced by our nation. This is not to dismiss the threat of terrorism, but rather to put it in perspective. Those who seek to whip the nation into a frenzy of fear do a disservice to a country that expelled the British, fought two world wars, and stared down the Soviet empire.
Liberty is lost through complacency and a subservient mindset. When we accept or even welcome automobile checkpoints, random searches, mandatory identification cards, and paramilitary police in our streets, we have lost a vital part of our American heritage. America was born of protest, revolution, and mistrust of government. Subservient societies neither maintain nor deserve freedom for long.
What baffles my mind is that Mr. Paul and his fellow libertarian travelers in arms (including a certain attorney mentioned down below) have a real dilemma on their hands. It seems that they utterly fail to see the real danger posed by the terrorists abroad. It isn't so much that they're seeking control, as much as they are seeking death. What blows my mind is the fact that terrorists WANT TO KILL US!!! Mr. Paul and his fellow libertarians have a warped view of human nature. Hatred, malice, envy, greed, murder are all things the Scripture tells individuals in the early church to put off from themselves because they are a new person in Christ. It is because these islamofacists are of a different religion, they have absolutely no compunction whatsoever with killing as many people as possible and they don't even mess around with honoring civil liberties, in fact, they seek to use our very freedom against us to harm us. What Mr. Paul doesn't do and he SHOULD is to address the question of how does one give the state the tools it needs to apprehend those who would harm us and at the same time, how does one maximize civil liberties at the same time. Answering this basic question hasn't been done by the libertarians and is one reason why I can't join their ranks. The police state needs constant and vigilant oversight to keep its power in proper perspective, but I also want the government to apprehend those who would or have done us harm.
Until libertarians start to address man's completely fallen nature and until they start to answer this simple question of governance, they will continue to be lost and wandering prophets crying in an irrelevant wilderness.
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