Ron Paul is BETTER than the Founders

We know about Ron Paul, the humble doctor and family man who turned statesman and advocated for peace, liberty and prosperity for 30 years.  Many compare Ron Paul with the founding fathers but the more I learn about our founders the more I am convinced that Ron Paul stands above them.

Take George Washington.  What churned Washington into a revolutionary wasn't a quest for liberty for the American people but his own bruised and colossal ego.  Early in his life, he was furious and humiliated that as a member of Virginia's slave owning aristocratic plantation class, he was denied a commission in the British army.  Washington also lobbied hard for a land grant from George III to expand his already gargantuan land holdings and slave plantations.  Washington deemed himself a high ranking and noble member of the privileged ruling aristocracy.  His anger with the British stems from the fact that America's ruling aristocracy was denied equal recognition and power that was conferred upon Britain's own ruling aristocracy.  The real George Washington vs. the fictional Washington legend that we find in our history books is a story of conflict that includes the good, the bad and the ugly.

Thomas Jefferson, another aristocratic member of the Virginia slave holding plantation class, is difficult and perplexing because of his extraordinary mind, prose, philosophical views and writings.  Jefferson may have believed what he wrote, but he didn't live it.  In fact, Jefferson was a compulsive spender who lived way beyond his means and was always in debt to fund his lavish lifestyle.  While Jefferson did call slavery a "moral and political depravity", he never freed his slaves except for 5 slaves who were members of the Hemmings family and possibly the children he fathered with his slave Sally Hemming.   Jefferson was so in debt at the time of his death that his slaves were auctioned off on the front lawn of Monticello and Monticello itself was auctioned off for a pittance.  In reality, Jefferson lived his entire life as a reckless slave holding aristocrat.  Jefferson's private life in no way comports with his incredible public life.  Despite his flaws, Jefferson was an extraordinary man.

Alexander Hamilton was a most unusual character.  He rose up from the lower middle class and was born and raised on a Caribbean slave plantation island.  Hamilton revered and worshiped all things British including its empire and aristocratic merchantilism.  Hamilton was catapulted to power and fame when he got noticed by Washington early in the Revolutionary War.  Hamilton was smart, brave, dashing, loyal and hardworking. However, Hamilton also had an obsession with himself who he perceived as a rising Napoleon Bonaparte.  After the Revolutionary War Hamilton ferociously fought for a new army and a war with France.  Fellow Federalist John Adams, who was president at the time, squashed his war and military ambitions.  Hamilton was so incensed with Adams that he successfully waged a campaign to guarantee that Adams would be a one term president for the crime of refusing to pursue a military US empire and costly wars.

Benjamin Franklin was an extraordinary and noble man by any measurement.  He may have been America's first voluntarist because he was always organizing voluntary groups like fire fighters and he also lobbied the rich to donate books and money for libraries and public schools.  Franklin belonged to many groups that voluntarily sought to solve problems without government and public money.  Ben Franklin was 100% self-made and rose from humble beginning as the son of a Boston candle maker.  He was also an incredibly astute diplomat who knew how to play the French against the British and vice versa. Without Franklin's superb diplomacy skills, it's doubtful that the French would have ever intervened on behalf of the American Revolution.  But even Franklin, who truly believed that a deal could be cut with the British to keep America a sovereign nation but a loyal component of the British Empire, lobbied the British for a land grant for himself.

John Adams was, in my humble opinion, the founder closest to Ron Paul in ideology, morality and principles, even if Ron Paul and John Adams are temperamentally quite different. Adams was the son of a farmer who lived a simple life but throughout his life he never flinched or waivered on his principle, even though Adams had a few missteps and errors in judgment, particularly with the Alien and Sedition Acts. The enduring legacy of John Adams is that he fought Hamilton and other Federalist warmongers, the neocons of the day, and even sacrificed a second term as president to save the nation from war with France.  For more on John and Abigail Adams, see:

John and Abigail, the Original Adams Family

At the end of the day, our founders are still extraordinary men and like all men they have their own flaws, limitations and motivations.  Still, they were willing to sacrifice everything in pursuit of their Revolution.  Jefferson narrowly escaped capture by the British when they literally showed up at Monticello to arrest him.  Washington was well aware that he gambled the house and everything he owned on the Revolution.  It's also fair to say that our founders were products of the times and despite their flaws they successfully forged a new version of human liberty that for the most part recognized natural rights as a guiding principle.

I think our founders would all be very proud of Ron Paul for ideologically perfecting and clarifying their dream in a context that is far more moral and relevant.  Ron Paul never asked for anything and he never got anything.  Ron Paul never sought glory or power or land or privilege.  It's hard to find a human being alive or dead whose motivations are purer than that of Ron Paul.

Was There an American Revolution?

Having just finished reading the books 1776 and John Adams by David McCullough, it became clear that the problems we have today are nothing new. While 1776 was an agonizing year of disappointment and profound suffering with Washington's rag tag army of yeoman farmers being constantly on the run from the British, it took another 6.5 years for the Revolution to end with the Treaty of Paris, albeit with more than a little help from the French Navy that managed to sail to the right place at precisely the time.

It's been said that at the time of the Revolution, a third of the American people were British loyalists, a third just didn't care either which way who ruled them and a third were more or less supportive of severing America's ties as a British colony. Washington became America's first president because he got the credit for winning the Revolution. There were no political parties but by the time the Constitution was written, those who led the Revolution were engaged in ferocious battles with each other as two sides emerged, the Federalists and the Republicans.

The Federalists were led by Alexander Hamilton and they sought a very strong federal government with  significant centralized powers.  The Republicans were led by Thomas Jefferson who abhorred federal powers and considered America to be a union of sovereign states and that most power should be vested with the states and not the federal government.  Jefferson greatly feared federal power which he rightfully perceived as the means erode liberty.

The Federalist were also strongly attached to Britain and many considered them to be loyalist loving royalists. Post Revolution, the Federalist sought to align America with Britain at the expense of France. Meanwhile the French were embroiled in their own hideous revolution that went horribly bad and resulted in the Reign of Terror and a bloodbath.

The Federalists were screaming for WAR with France. The French did become frightfully annoying and French ships were seizing US commercial ships and imprisoning sailors. John Adams, a Federalist, totally opposed war with France. Adams was definitely a closeted Republican at heart, at least to some degree, and he dreaded entangling America in a foreign war. In fact, the Federalists were furious with Adams because he refused to ask Congress for a Declaration of War against France because he knew he'd get it. Moreover, Adams greatly feared that Congress would simply declare war anyway. Through sheer cunning and perseverance, Adams managed to keep the warmongers at bay and his brilliant tenacity won the day, much to the chagrin of the rabid Federalists.

Hamilton was dubbed the aspiring American Napoleon by the Republicans because he sought empire as well as personal glory and power.  His untimely 1804 demise in the infamous Burr-Hamilton duel did in fact weaken the Federalists for a while.

Anyway, this very recent American Conservative piece by Robert Nisbit not only caught my eye but clearly put into focus a lot of things about America that have long tortured me.

Was There an American Revolution?

Was there in fact an American Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century? By this, I mean a revolution involving sudden, decisive, and irreversible changes in social institutions, groups, and traditions, in addition to the war of liberation from England that we are more likely to celebrate.

Clearly, this is a question that generates much controversy. There are scholars whose answer to the question is strongly negative. Indeed, ever since Edmund Burke’s time there have been students to declare that revolution in any precise sense of the word did not take place—that in substance the American Revolution was no more than a group of Englishmen fighting on distant shores for traditionally English political rights against a government that had sought to exploit and tyrannize. According to this argument, it was a war of restitution and liberation, not revolution; the outcome, one set of political governors replacing another. This view is widespread in our time and is found as often among ideological conservatives as among liberals and radicals.

At the opposite extreme is the view that a full-blown revolution did indeed take place. This is clearly what John Adams believed: “The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments, of their duties and obligations … This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people, was the real American Revolution.” And Samuel Adams, more radical in ideology and hence more demanding in defining revolution, asked rhetorically, “Was there ever a revolution brought about, especially one so important as this, without great internal tumults and violent convulsions?”

If there was a genuine revolution in America, we shall find it not in the sphere of ideological tracts—which history demonstrates may or may not yield actual revolution—but rather in the social sphere.

Nisbit plunges into a fascinating discussion of: Feudalism in America, A Land Based Class System, Laws of Inheritance, An Inevitable Revolution, Religious Freedom, The Great Contradiction, Freedom and Slavery, Dispersion and Division, A Nation of Joiners and The American Brand of Intellects.

Then, Nisbit goes on to claim that America did indeed have a real revolution and pretty much attributed it to the fact that Americans were a simple, practical and common sense people who were not susceptible to various European intellectual movements and their convoluted social and political theories.

The intellectual leaders of the American Revolution were generally businessmen or landowners; they had a stake in society. It is inconceivable that either a Jefferson or a Hamilton could have renounced what Burke called the “wisdom of expediency” in the interest of pursuing an abstract principle. No American leader could have contemplated mass executions or imprisonments with delight, as did the millennialist intellectuals of 1649, 1793, and 1917. At no point in the American Revolution, or in its aftermath, do we find any Committee of the Public Safety after the French fashion, any Council of the People’s Commissars, any Lilburnes, Robespierres, or Lenins. Nothing so completely gave the American Revolution its distinctive character as the absence of the European species of political intellectual. It is only in the present century that we have seen this species coming into prominence in America.

In conclusion, I would argue, then, that there was indeed an American Revolution in the full sense of the word–a social, moral, and institutional revolution that effected major changes in the character of American society–as well as a war of liberation from England that was political in nature.

Who in their right mind today wouldn't welcome a true Revolution for liberty? The fact that the Federalists won the day and the original Jeffersonian Republicans got squashed is indeed a most disturbing legacy of American history.

That said, the Jeffersonian Republicans never really disappeared. While a minority, they exist as Ron Paul supporters, Libertarians, Independents and folks of various political stripes who do in fact comprehend that Hamiltonian Federalism is a Big Fail.