Ron Paul Can Still Win, if . . .

 by Joseph BH McMillan  

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Ron Paul did not reinvent the wheel with his Principles of Freedom; he was simply restating the thinking which prevailed when the United States declared independence, and subsequently drew up the Constitution.

A year ago, when the first Republican presidential candidates began setting out their election wares, I was quite attracted to Ron Paul’s initial message.

He was the only candidate who seemed to recognize the need for a set of Principles to define and limit government authority, and protect individual freedom. He called these his Principles of Freedom. They read as follows:

1. Rights belong to individuals, not groups.

2. Property should be owned by people, not government.

3. All voluntary associations should be permissible — economic and social.

4. The government's monetary role is to maintain the integrity of the monetary unit, not participate in fraud.

5. Government exists to protect liberty, not to redistribute wealth or to grant special privileges.

6. The lives and actions of people are their own responsibility, not the government's.

Unfortunately, there is no cohesiveness to these Principles. They are a bit of a mishmash. But at least, I thought, Paul grasped the fundamentals that lay at the heart of American constitutional government – or the spirit of it, if not the letter.

Paul was not inventing the wheel with his Principles; he was simply restating the ‘thinking’ which prevailed when the United States declared independence, and subsequently drew up the Constitution.

The First sixteen Sections of the Constitution of Virginia (adopted June 29th, 1776) best illustrate this thinking at work. Those first sixteen Sections are a Bill of Rights which serve as the governing Principles of the Constitution. Thomas Jefferson was involved in the drafting, and used those same Principles as the basis of the Declaration of Independence adopted on July 4th, 1776. And the Declaration of Independence specifically refers to “laying [government’s] foundation on such principles . . . as to [the people] seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness . . .”

Jefferson didn’t claim that he was inventing the wheel either. In a letter of May 8th, 1825, he stated the purpose was “not to find out new principles, or new arguments, never before thought of . . .”

Thomas Paine, in his Rights of Man, said this about the Principles at the core of the new American (and French) constitutional orders: “what we now see in the world, from the Revolutions of America and France, are a renovation of the natural order of things, a system of principles as universal as truth and the existence of man, and combining moral with political happiness and national prosperity.”

Most, if not all these Principles can be traced back to John Locke. They are a combination of what Locke calls the natural state of men, and what he claims are men’s “civic interests.” The natural state of men, according to Locke, is a state of ‘perfect freedom’ to deal with their own affairs "as they think fit . . . without asking leave or depending on the will of any other man." Further, they are in a "state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another."

I explain Locke’s natural state of men more fully in Article 1 of my series of articles, The Ten Principles of Freedom.

Locke’s “civic interests” are "life, liberty, health, and indolence of body; and the possession of outward things, such as money, lands, houses, furniture and the like."

This combination of man’s natural state and his “civic interests” developed into what we know today as Rights.

But it is a misnomer to call the Principles on which government should rest Bills or Charters of Rights. They are principles which embody what we call rights. Thomas Paine considered these Principles to be the following:

1. Men are born, and always continue, free and equal in respect of their rights. Civil distinctions, therefore, can be founded only on public utility. 2. The end of all political associations is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man; and these rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance of oppression. 3. The nation is essentially the source of all sovereignty; nor can any INDIVIDUAL, or ANY BODY OF MEN, be entitled to any authority which is not expressly derived from it.

He then said this:

In these principles, there is nothing to throw a Nation into confusion by inflaming ambition. They are calculated to call forth wisdom and abilities, and to exercise them for the public good, and not for the emolument or aggrandisement of particular descriptions of men or families.

So, for example, Paine’s Principle 1 is that “men are born, and always continue, free and equal . . .” But he then goes on to limit this ‘equal freedom’ to their “rights.” Principle 2 is the same: the Principle defines the “end of all political associations” as being the preservation of these “rights.” And first among those “rights” is “liberty.” But if we were all “free and equal” we would not need a ‘right’ to tell us that.

The Constitution of Virginia is the same. Section 1 provides “that all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity, namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.” And Section 2 says that “all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people; that magistrates are their trustees and servants, and at all times amenable to them.”

So although these Principles are contained in a Bill of Rights, they are still in effect Principles which enumerate rights, without actually defining the content of any of the rights they refer to.

When Thomas Paine identified the deficiencies in the Charters and Constitutions of England at the time, he could well have been describing today’s Bills and Charters of Rights.

It is a perversion of terms to say that a charter gives rights. It operates by a contrary effect — that of taking rights away. Rights are inherently in all the inhabitants; but charters, by annulling those rights, in the majority, leave the right, by exclusion, in the hands of a few. If charters were constructed so as to express in direct terms, "that every inhabitant, who is not a member of a corporation, shall not exercise the right of voting," such charters would, in the face, be charters not of rights, but of exclusion. The effect is the same under the form they now stand; and the only persons on whom they operate are the persons whom they exclude. Those whose rights are guaranteed, by not being taken away, exercise no other rights than as members of the community they are entitled to without a charter; and, therefore, all charters have no other than an indirect negative operation. They do not give rights to A, but they make a difference in favour of A by taking away the right of B, and consequently are instruments of injustice.

The pro-life lobby today could certainly identify with that sentiment. The “Right to Life” of the unborn child is “taken away” to “make a difference in favor” of a mother’s “Right to Choose” – her “Right to Choose” to terminate the “Right to Life” of her own child.

I deal with the contradictions inherent in these things we call Rights in my book Freedom v A Tyranny of Rights, so I won’t elaborate on them here.

The point is that Rights are not the same thing as Principles. We resorted to defining certain conditions which we considered should accord with human dignity as Rights because of an inability to define the Principles which underline them. And because we could not explain why we should respect certain conditions, we simply claimed that these things are “inherent” in all human beings, or that they were accorded us by “nature” or our “Creator,” or a combination of all three.

But we know now that Rights are the inventions of men, and specifically the man Locke. And we know too that courts in the United States and elsewhere in the world are constantly fiddling with our precious ‘rights,’ as are politicians. Rights are also at the heart of bitter controversies as to what they actually mean. In Europe, rights are used to protect the vilest killers of children and terrorists, and to throw homeschoolers in prison.

And as our rights fall apart, so do the principles which embody those Rights, because the Principles are predicated on the illusion that these Rights have some substantive content, which they don’t.

Which all brings me back to Ron Paul. When I first noted that he seemed to understand the importance of Principles (even though he threw the usual old Rights in), I had hoped that this theme would become central to his campaign. I wondered if he could free himself of what Jefferson called “sanctimonious reverence” and grasp the nettle.

Jefferson knew that a time would come, and he even perceived it before his death, when we would have to revisit the Constitution, and perhaps even revise it considerably. He wrote this to Samuel Kercheval in July 1816:

Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the arc of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well; I belonged to it, and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present, but without the experience of the present; and forty years of experience in government is worth a century of book-reading; and this they would say themselves, were they to rise from the dead. I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

That is where I had hoped Ron Paul was heading. I was hoping that he would be advocating clear Principles to define government. Even if amendment of the Constitution is not a particularly promising prospect, at least he could have pledged to implement and govern in accordance with clear and defined Principles, Principles which no one could object to without claiming an authority by virtue of a superior intellect, or more refined sense of compassion; a claim, in effect, to possess a greater freedom to the rest of us.

And here is the short version of those Principles:

1. No other human being or group of human beings (including government) can tell you what to do, without your consent.

2. No other human being or group of human beings (including government) can compel you to serve what he has created, without your consent.

3. No other human being or group of human beings (including government) can compel you to enter into any obligation, without your consent.

4. No other human being or group of human beings (including government) can compel you to work for him, or take your income or property, without your consent.

5. The family, the union of a man and a woman to create new life, being the only discernible purpose of life, and the only means of perpetuating human life, is sacrosanct.

6. Do not use or threaten violence.

7. Do not cause or be party to a betrayal, sexual or otherwise, of your own or any other person's family obligations.

8. Do not interfere with the property of others.

9. Don't be dishonest.

10. Do not use your freedom to interfere with the freedom of others.

The important thing about these Principles is that they are the secular counterpart of the Ten Commandments. But that does not mean the implementation of these Principles would create a theocratic state. What it does mean is that we would establish government in accordance with our heritage. That would undoubtedly help with the Christian vote, especially the evangelical vote.

Neither would these Principles ‘abolish’ our Rights; they would give a specific content to those Rights, although we would not need to rely on some nebulous concept prone to manipulation by politicians and the courts to serve a particular constituency. That should satisfy the civil liberties brigade. Their only objection could be that the Principles don’t sufficiently cater for their superior intellects and greater compassion. But to persist in that argument they have to claim a greater liberty to the rest of us, and thus inequality (the cornerstone of their rationale).

And any Presidential candidate opposing such Principles will have to, in effect, claim to know better than God Himself – not a particularly vote-catching position.

But most important of all, each and every policy could then be shown to accord with clear and unambiguous Principles, so everyone could work out for themselves whether any policy is what they agreed to by voting for the candidate, especially policies introduced after the election.

And in respect of the Democratic contender, he or she would be in a corner. He or she would have to quite blatantly claim to be more equal to the rest of us if they sought to oppose such Principles, and more, as I have already said, they would have to claim to better understand what is good for human beings than their Creator.

The effect of adopting such Principles would be far-reaching. I deal with some of the effects in the concluding article on the Ten Principles of Freedom, and also in my book Freedom v A Tyranny of Rights, so I will not elaborate further here.

I do believe however that Ron Paul’s prospects would be considerably improved if he adopted these Principles, as would the prospects of the American people to live in freedom and prosperity. I also believe that this election will determine the character of the United States for a long time to come. If any of the Democratic candidates win, the United States will move quickly towards a European-style Welfare system from which it will become impossible to escape.

It’s not too late, although time is short. And judging from the polls, he has got nothing to lose, and everything to gain for the American people.

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