Hunter Wallace reports that Ron Paul said in last night's debate that a border fence is not the answer to our illegal immigration problem. I can't say I'm surprised at that. I was somewhat surprised to read further that he also said our judicial system was 'biased against minorities.'
With statements like these I have to say I am finally ruling out voting for Paul, although I had not completely excluded the possibility. I realize Paul has his staunch defenders, for whom absolutely nothing would be a deal-breaker, but I've concluded he is a hidebound ideologue for whom his libertarian ideas are the be-all and the end-all, and the concept of ethnic loyalty non-existent. This is the problem I have with libertarians generally and with ideologues as a group. The ideal or doctrine they believe in is the top priority, and consequences be damned. The ideologue or doctrinaire, whatever his belief system, does not take reality as his measure, but the all-powerful belief system. Ethnonationalists, ethnopatriots, ethnoloyalists put their people ahead of abstractions, however fine the abstractions (''liberty'', or ''small government") may sound or look on paper.
I also believe that ideas like 'liberty, 'freedom', 'small government' and so on are ideas that are peculiar to our folk, or at least our particular understanding of them is something that is characteristic of us. Other peoples may use those words and terms but they hold a different meaning outside our people. There's no need for us to construct a disembodied ideology enshrining those words and concepts; they are carried in our DNA, though best fostered in the right environment. And certainly a country with a multicultural, multiracial makeup cannot be expected to sustain those notions, regardless of whether we elect libertarians.
And yes, I realize that there are paleolibertarians who are more friendly to our kinds of ideas, but I don't think Ron Paul best exemplifies such a libertarian. He seems utterly detached from any concern about the future of our people. An aside: he was the doctor of my aunt; my uncle and aunt lived in the town where Paul has practiced obstetrics and gynecology for many years. Apparently he is a nice man and a good doctor, and I appreciate his pro-life stance but that is not enough.
The discussion at OD touches on the issue of a border fence or ''wall'' as opponents often term it. I remember Paul making a statement that the wall could just as easily 'keep people in the country,' apparently an allusion to East Berlin. That statement baffles me, and it surprises me that a lot of people repeat it seriously. Would a border fence contain people on every border and shore of our country? Would it prevent us leaving by plane or boat or other means? I mean, would it honestly turn this country into one big gulag? The idea that the proposed Mexican border fence could make us all prisoners seems like hyperbole, to put it very mildly. What I worry about is the threat to our freedom of movement from other sources; the tendency to make it more difficult to get passports, or the fact that there are few places which would even be worth fleeing to anyway. A physical barrier which would supposedly contain Americans on every side within our perimeters is absurd. Yet people keep repeating Paul's warning about such a wall keeping us in.
One more thing: Paul has said he favors legal immigration and would encourage it. That is just not acceptable to me. Legal immigration is a big part of our problem, not just illegal, and yet Paul does not see that.
Even if Paul somehow got the nomination and won the election, would he, without the help of like-minded people in Congress, the media, and the judiciary, be able to effect the wide-ranging reforms he proposes, such as ending the Fed (which I agree should be done, by all means) or ending aid to Israel? Unless he becomes absolute dictator, it hardly seems likely that he could effect the changes he calls for. I am afraid it would be business as usual in D.C.
To be honest, I see diminishing chances of making the vital changes we need -- like closing the borders and stopping even legal immigration, to use just one example. The politicians we have now are the sorriest lot in my lifetime and probably of all American history. The fact that Paul stands head and shoulders over many of them is only indicative of the sorriness of most politicians, not of his own merits, sadly. And I understand that we are crying out for a leader, but let's not grasp at straws.
The system has been so corrupted and infiltrated that it would seem impossible to arrest the rot, much less to cleanse out all the malignancy, using our present system.
I have no magic answer, except to say that not all change comes by political means, and that we cannot assume that today's conditions will always prevail, which is what everybody seems to assume. This present order of things cannot stand forever, and we must not underestimate what could be done if people simply walked away, refused to cooperate and to participate in maintaining this huge edifice of lies anymore.
