Ron Paul Was The Reason Trump Got Elected

It struck me the other day, with a pellucid clarity, that the real reason Donald Trump got elected was because Ron Paul had laid the groundwork for his victory through the influence on the electorate that his two campaigns for the Republican nomination, in 2008 and 2012, had wrought.

Ron Paul was the psychological nerve-primer that prepared the American body-politic to accept the Trump offer to run the country. Paul’s infusion of Libertarian ideals and ideas  rekindled the romance that was implied in the Jeffersonian Covenant with Mankind. For once the public had a politician who reminded them that the Republic was not about GDP or full employment or security but rather was about Human Adventure, taking the risk, and chasing the girl that was the Statue of Liberty and whose face used to be incused into the Silver Dollar of the United States of America.

That was before not only the womanization of America, but the womanization of politics.

Before that, Man chased the Woman, be it the girl on the other side of the class, or Liberty extended over a 3,000 mile-wide paradise stolen from the Indians. Since the Indians were only 0.5% of the population, and nobody outside of them mentioned the theft or seemed too bothered by it, the theft was institutionalized — after all, there were treaties, the White Man said. Everything was legal. And not even the Indians were calling for the expulsion of the White Man and his deportation back to the countries of his ancestors, which would be the obvious just solution. Libertarian theory requires at the least the restoration of stolen property back to the original owner. The penalty for theft is paying back twice the amount stolen plus something for the amount of fear or endangerment produced (for example, the fear generated by a child shoplifting a candy bar when the owner isn’t looking would call for far less fear-compensation that an armed robber using a gun).

So Ron Paul’s Jeffersonian alarum calls prepared America to hear a modified version of this philosophy coming from Trump. Trump, for example, scoffed at NATO, put down the FED, criticized the Nipponese whale-butchers for not paying their “fair share” while Americans subsidized the national defense of their extremely wealthy nation, and said “Let’s get along with the Russkies”, all positions from the Ron Paul Political Bible.

We even heard Mises member and perennial Libertarian, Llewellyn Rockwell, supporting Trump as a wild card that might be libertarian, as well as Ron Paul fellow economic-traveler David Stockman going over to Trump, and both bypassing the official Libertarian milquetoast candidate, Gary Johnson, as did Ron Paul.

Additionally, Trump was an unapologetic Capitalist, and obviously, with Ron Paul as a pro-free marketeer, and with the other side blatantly pro-socialist and big government, it was inevitable that a large part of the old Ron Paul support would seep into the vote totals of Donald Trump. And it did.

Another factor was that both Ron Paul and Trump were individualists in that they both went their own way and didn’t fret over what other people thought of them. Ron Paul was known as Dr. No when he was in Congress, often casting the lone “No” vote on a bill that he felt was either unConstitutional or anti-Libertarian. Trump, too, obviously didn’t care very much what people thought of his outlandish, boorish behavior, although in courtesy and refinement Ron Paul and Donald Trump couldn’t be more dissimilar. But they both obviously didn’t give a damn about what others thought of their political stances.

So the verisimilitude of Trump’s message and iconoclasm to that of Ron Paul’s was the factor that led many former Ron Paul supporters, frustrated by Johnson’s feeble campaign, to vote for Trump. And those votes, going to Trump instead of Johnson, were the narrow margin that Trump needed to drive a wedge into the cracked stump of the Clinton campaign, and split it into oblivion. Those votes were the razor thin edge that Trump needed to gain the White House, and possibly change the direction of America.

President Trump ought to say a prayer of thanks every day to the man whose philosophy got him elected: Dr. Ron Paul.

— Paul Grad, enviro-Libertarian

 

The U.S. Olympic Participation Enables South Korean Dog-Butchers

By participating in the Winter Olympics in South Korea, the United States is enabling and justifying the heinous and immoral Korean dog-meat trade. This participation recognizes a country that butchers two million dogs a year, or about 6,000 every 24 hours, as a valid country amongst the “civilized” nations, but it is clear that this continued participation in the Great Crime of the dog-meat trade makes South Korean one of the “Miscreant” Nations of the world, Nations so immoral in their conduct that they should be boycotted  by Libertarians and Vegetarians everywhere.

It is imperative that all humane people boycott South Korea, and any other nation in the world that allows the dog-meat trade, and boycott them in a way that ruins their economy.

Avenge the dogs that are being murdered by this callous, sadistic, miscreant nation of South Korea by boycotting it so mercilessly that they are taught a lesson which they and the world will never forget.

The price of immorality must be bankruptcy. Demand the U.S. sever all trade and defense ties with South Korea, let the parasites pay for their own damned defense and stop sucking off the bank accounts of American taxpayers.

Boycott the South Korean dog-butchers into bankruptcy.

— Paul Grad, Libertarian Party of Oregon Gubernatorial Nominee 2014

Thom Paine on the Difference between the Democrats and Libertarians

Thomas Paine, that doughty blowtorch of the American Revolution, summed up succinctly the  difference between the pathetic Democratic Party and the Libertarian philosophy that founded The Republic.

In his third chapter of “The Rights of Man”, Paine states “Government, on the old system, is an assumption of power, for the aggrandizement of itself; on the new, a delegation of power for the common benefit of society. The former supports itself by keeping up a system of war; the latter proposes a system of peace, as the true means of enriching a nation. The one encourages national prejudices; the other promotes universal society, as the means of universal commerce. The one measures its prosperity by the quantity of revenue it extorts; the other proves its excellence by the small quantity of taxes it requires.”

Though Paine lived a quarter of a millennium ago, he must have been reading all the news since Clinton got elected.

I can just hear the Democrats calling him a Fascist.

Paul Grad, enviro-libertarian