Ron Paul was one of 5 Republicans that voted to repeal the military’s “Don’t ask, Don’t tell policy” yesterday evening. Here are the other 4 Republicans that voted for its repeal.
Ros-Lehtinen from Florida
Djou from Hawaii (recently elected, turns out not to be a conservative)
Biggert from Illinois
Cao from Louisiana
Not only did these so called conservatives vote to repeal this policy, they chose to join Pelosi in doing so before the military completed its review on how a change to the policy would affect the military and before military personnel were allowed to voice their opinion. This was done so that they can try to pass it before they most likely lose the majority in November. Worse yet, they are pushing it though in the defense spending bill.
In the Senate, ultra liberal Republican Susan Collins of Maine followed Paul’s example and voted with Democrats in Committee to approve the same amendment. It will be voted on by the Senate soon.
Issues such as this one illustrate once again how libertarians such as Ron Paul stray from our founding principles. The Founders believed that the laws and policies of the country were bound by a higher authority. That authority being the bible. He obviously does not believe this. You cannot believe that and vote the way he does on these issues. Neglecting the bible for the sake of liberty is not promoting liberty, but lawlessness. And neglecting the bible because it is popular is simply pagan. It is legal positivism and not the basis of our founding.
I am planning to put out another post later on some of the other outrageous thing going on in Congress instead of fulfilling their duty of coming up with a budget. I thought his warranted its own though.
{ 13 comments }
You can be fiscally conservative without trying to control everyones life. I don’t even understand it. You’re fine with gays serving as long as you don’t know they’re gay? How stupid and ignorant can you get.
I was in a cavalry unit in Germany during the early nineties before DADT. There was a bunch of gay guys who lived in the barracks on the airfield. A few of them were my friends. Everyone in the barracks knew they were gay. It did not affect anyone’s job performance.
Funny thing about conservatives is they purport to believe in liberty…but only THEIR definition of liberty. There’s only one real definition of liberty, period. Freedom from control. Not “freedom from control, except for X.”
One thing is truly telling about “conservatism”, though: Methinks they protest too much…
“If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals — if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.” –Ronald Reagan
”The Founders believed that the laws and policies of the country were bound by a higher authority. That authority being the bible. He obviously does not believe this. ”
Did we all just eat a giant bowl of stupid for breakfast?
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
Right … Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.
You guys just foam at the mouth of the thought of an actual conservative in office. It’s not the job of government to ban individuals from service based off of their sexual orientation. As stated in other comments, I too am a veteran and had no problem whatsoever with gays serving. What I did have a problem with, was the racism and the unsustainable debt inducing foreign policy that we wage overseas. What a waste-of-time conversation.
For your information, the term ‘God’ in those days was meant very differently than today. They referred to ‘God’ as a term for nature. If you read Jefferson’s quotes on Christianity, you’d probably have a heart attack.
Nothing in our constitution comes from the Bible. Stop lying to us.
Crazy Redneck
From the sense of the size and scope of the federal government, Reagan is right. Especially when you look at their involvement in private industry and “property”, but not when it comes to something like this. You confuse the word liberty with freedom. Back in the founders day when people were really educated on these type things, there was a significant difference. They chose the word Liberty over the word Freedom. Freedom being what you described…more expansive with a general lack of restraint, especially from the government. Liberty means something different. The founders thought of it as freedom with reasonable limits and cultural boundaries. These reasonable limits and cultural boundaries were based upon the Bible in their time, which is the general idea of what I wrote about in the post. Unfortunately, we do not live in a moral society anymore.
As for my unit, I do believe there would have been issues. Soldiers would deal with it and do their jobs, but that does not mean it would not have had a significant effect. There are deeper issues here. You should read my post on why I now think there is a need for a constitutional amendment to protect marriage.
Kyle
I am not ok with homosexual relationships as the Bible calls it an abomination. I support anything that tries to prevent the moral decay of our society and that includes within our military. This policy keeps many homosexuals out of the military, which I am fine with. That does not mean that I would treat them any different. Hate the sin, not the sinner. Like I suggested to Crazy Redneck, you should read my post on the need to protect traditional marriage. Even if you are not a Christian, being a fan of liberty you should take into consideration where this movement has come from.
As a side note, I do not really consider Ron Paul a fiscal conservative. He has the rhetoric of one, but he spends like the rest of them. He also has not had any influence over his fellow congressmen, which is sad when you consider how long he has been there. He has islolated himself because of how he treats people. It was very telling that he was not one of the 38 co-sponsors of HR5029 (Economic Freedom Act)
Giovanni
I will try to be a little more respectful than you were to me. I do feel it would fall under the belief of the founders that their should be reasonable limits and cultural bounds. There is debate on whether Jefferson was a Diest or a Christian, but that is for God to decide, not me. Hopefully it was the latter. Either way, he still felt that the Bible was doctrine that we should base our lives upon. The same can be said of the other Founders. Christianity played a key part in every aspect of the development of our country. I promise you I am not lying and I did not eat a bowl of stupid for breakfast. There are a few books that might change your mind if you are willing to read them.
-”The Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States” (Benjamin F. Morris) Old book written in 1864 I believe. Basically a complilation of 1,000 pages of original source material.
-Chapter 3 of “We Still Hold These Truths” (Matthew Spalding) from the Heritage Foundation is a good read as well on this topic
-”The Politically In-Correct Guide to the Bible” (Robert Hutchinson) also explains the role and influence of Christianity in the development of our government and takes it back all the way to biblical times.
As far as the Separation of Church and State. That is something that was developed by a liberal court system, not the founders. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”. You have to take this from the context of where they came from. England, who had a National Church that did not always promote Biblically correct Christian Principles. It was meant to prevent this from happening, not to keep religion out of government. If you read that clause again you can see that pretty easily. It was really an issue of federalism considering that at the time the Constitution was written, 6 of the 13 colonies had State Churches. They basically did not want the federal government to tell them what denomination of Christianity to follow. The separation of Church and and State was derived by the courts when they took the “wall of separation” statement made by Thomas Jefferson out of context. It was in a letter from Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut in 1802 and he was actually explaining why he was opposed to proclaiming national days of public fasting to this particular group. (A denominational thing) Like the discussion on who should give the opening prayer before the first Continental Congress, this was an issue of promoting one Christian denomination over another, not an issue of separating church from the government. There is plenty of evidence to support this, starting with the most obvious and ignored fact that the then President Jefferson attended religious services in the House of Representatives two days after he wrote the letter. He also supported the very thing he opposed as President when he was Governor of Virginia. (Once again a federalism issue)
Hope that explains my postion a little better. Its not based upon fiction.
Actually, ‘separation of church and state’ comes from the U.S. Constitution, not “liberals.” The term was, as you stated, coined by Jefferson. You are part right in that all the founders were Christian, and back then religious freedom pretty much meant the freedom to choose which Christian denomination you wanted. But as with many things in the Constitution the principle was larger than that. As unconstitutional as it was, slavery also existed in those days, but you’d be hard pressed to find anyone today who would say slavery is Constitutional. The framers were, it turns out, wiser than they knew in the way they phrased things.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” Period.
No mention of Christianity at all…
Are you Obama’s water boy or something. Ron Paul is the only man who has any commen sense. It sounds very clearly to me that this blogger has been brainwashed by the media. By the way we went into Iraq for “WMD’S” that didn’t exist. Plus if they were there we were the ones who sold them to saddam. Ron Paul is right about practicaly everything, you are just to arrogent to admit it. He wants to put our troops on our borders, and silver back in our quarters. Even a majority of our troops agree with Paul on just about everything. They favor his foreign policy and I think they would know more about what is going on over seas than a civilian sitting behind a laptop. They know that only certain people are benifiting from this war and thats the military industrial complex not iraqi or afgani civilians or Americans for that matter. We have lost so much freedom and way to many lives and are broke, so why continue a war that cannot be won. I mean you cannot win a war on a tactic. Terrorism is a tactic, not a group, and it can never be won, just like the war on drugs. Plus, if the troops favor his foreign policy, and we are supposed to support the troops, shouldn’t we support his foreign policy as well? And if you say no, then how can you say you support our troops? It is more like you support the “special intrests.” Wake up will you. It is people in denile like yourself that is ruining this country. How do you promote democracey throgh the barrel of a gun? Plus why should America play god and be the ones to nation build. We cannot even maintain our nation. Wake up and look around, we are not the only democracey in the world, so why are we the ones to force war on these countries. We have killed more civilians that enemies. Our founding fathers said promote peice through trade, fore they had first hand knowledge of how many countries hated Brittian for their imperialism, and now so many people all around the world are starting to hate us just the same. It’s called blowback. Even the CIA has said Pauls foreign policy makes sense, but for some reason everyone just wants to keep spreading hatred and death. “Those who are willing to give up essential liberties for temporary safty will not nor deserve neither” Ben Franklin “There is more to fear in big banks than standing armie” Jefferson “If this country allows a central bank big corporations and banks will grow beside the peopel and our grandkids will wake up homeless in a country their fathers conquerd” Jefferson. “Thos who read nothing but newspapers know less than those who read nothing at all” Jefferson. You need some world history lessons, and I am not talking about a school lesson but learning history on your own. “One cannot learn by being taught or told but only by doing.” Jefferson. You have been conditiond my friend and I hope that one day you will wake up and realize that you have been herderd around like a sheep your whole life, but you mostlikly won’t but that is not my problem, for I am not sucking the blood out of this country, however liberals like yourself are.
Couldnt agree with Crazy_Redneck and Giovanni. One thing to add. The one thing that liberals cannot except it RESPONSIBILITY! Example the conservitaves already manned up to Bushes idiotic errors, but Obama’s errors were even worse. He won the nobel peice prize, yet he has a secret assassination list. He has carried out a bombing campaign on Lybia. How does he qualify for the Nobel Piece prize? Also he cannot man up and say the economy is in bad shap not just from bush but him as well for the Democrates controlled the house for 2 years and he did nothing to take advantage of it. Plus his own democrates even shot down his wasteful jobs bill. A bill that costs the tax payer $447 billion that is expected to make a generous 2 million jobs. So that sounds like a good idea? Lets say that these people who benifit from the 2 million jobs hold on to the jobs for 10 years only making 22k a year. How is it productive to have the tax payers paying $223,500 per job for ten years. It is complete nonsense. And yet Obama is going to blame someone else for his own mistakes when he is supposed to be the leader. What a joke.
Mystylplx,
I believe you may have posted your comment on the wrong post as I did not mention separation of church and state in this one. But since you did bring it up…Your quoting of the clause exposes the fact that the idea of separation of Church and State is not in the Constitution. It plainly says that Congress cannot establish a national religion. The Church of England was the historical backdrop of this clause. Preventing another National Church was the purpose….not to keep religion out of government. The principles that our nation was founded upon were all Biblically based further illustrating that today’s meaning, which was pushed much later by progressive courts, is incorrect. It also only applies to the federal level. This phrase that Jefferson coined was taken out of context. In his letter to the Danbury Baptists in Conn. (1802) he was assuring them that the federal government would not infringe on their right to worship as they please. I would encourge you or others to read the entire letter instead of using the short phrase used by the courts to push their ideology.
For those interested
http://www.wallbuilders.com/LIBissuesArticles.asp?id=123
Your mention of the founders leaving out the actual word Christianity really is a moot point considering the actual meaning of the clause, but I would like to point out the errancy of that point. It violates a very elemental concept in law, that is separating the intent of the law from the law itself. That should never be done, but progressives do it often…it leads to judicial activism. Your logic follows some inherently un-American principles that I have written about quite a bit.
http://thesteadyconservative.com/wordpress/2010/07/20/charles-merriam-and-un-american-principles/
http://thesteadyconservative.com/wordpress/2010/07/23/woodrow-wilson-and-historicism/
Your slavery point does not really papply here. The founders certainly felt that slavery was unconstitutional and they fought to get rid of it. That view did not change. But like you said, they were wise in how they worded things…but it was on purpose…they knew exactly why they were phrasing things the way they did. And they expected the intent of the law to be followed. A little background on my point.
http://www.wallbuilders.com/LIBissuesArticles.asp?id=122
WOW,
You called me a civilian behind a laptop, but I am a two tour Iraq War veteran. You mentioned that we went to war for WMD’s so I will assume you did not read the legislation that authorized force in Iraq. I might mention also completely avoided the issue at hand in the post. A few things for you to consider.
I believe your opening comment reveals how little you research the issues. Obama’s water boy? If you would have spent a few minutes reading over my blog you would realize how ridiculous that comment really is…perhaps if you read the title
Ron Paul’s foreign policy position does not exactly align with our founding fathers’ beliefs.
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2010/12/the-myth-of-isolationism-part-1-american-leadership-and-the-cause-of-liberty
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2010/10/americas-founders-and-the-principles-of-foreign-policy-sovereign-independence
You talk about terrorism as a tactic. It is much more than that. Do you understand the basis of the belief system behind these groups. Have you looked into the history of Islam or the purpose of the Mosque in Islam? Have you thought about the fact that we are dealing with a theo-political belief system and construct as LTC West elequently put it. You have listed some selected libertarian style Jefferson quotes. What do you think about the early challenges he faced with Islamic aggression?
I assure you I am no liberal my friend, nor am I a sheep that repeats something a career politician feeds me without taking the time to think about the position for myself. I would encourage you to do the same. By the way, I do agree with your subsequent comments. Part of the problem with the progressive ideology is that it promotes a system with no personal responsibility. Also I am an Austrian school guy so the idea being pushed by the Obama administration that we can tax and spend jobs into existence is pretty absurd. Looks like even some Democrats are starting to catch on a little on that point considering so many voted against his job bill.
yes i want to say thanx to tsc for making clear w/facts that ron paul is dangerous to our country but hides behind the constitution he misinterprets constantly….he is an old anti-american buzzard who is a huge reason why there should beterm limits!!!! tsc please send me your latest factual criticisms i can feed the ron paul idiots in the conservative groups im in on facebook,etc. thanx & god bless you in your good work & thanx bigtime for your service & continued service to our country!!!!
Todd…sent an email.
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