Ron Paul exemplifies the American dream of the Quick Fix. His is a simplistic mind, given to simplistic solutions.
The history of the last hundred years has shown that quick fixes are invariably wrong: in the interest of Quick Fix, we have gone from state appointment of Senators to direct election of Senators, making the Senate something very different from what the Founders intended; we have lowered the voting age, injecting a vast number of wet-behind-the-ears voters with no experience of life into the voting population; we have gone to a civil service system to avoid corruption, creating an entrenched and unelected bureaucracy.
We have also monkeyed with campaign finance in the aftermath of Watergate, supposedly to eliminate the corruption of campaign contributions, which has merely fed the growth of PACs and undermined party strength. All of these have brought upon us at least as many ills as they have ostensibly solved.
Quick fixes are always tempting—from Alexander’s slashing of the Gordian Knot up to the present day. They are also almost always wrong. “Term limits” is a popular quick fix that people pine for today—but term limits without abolishing civil service merely ensures that a government already burdened by an entrenched and unelected bureaucracy will be increasingly reliant upon that bureaucracy. Term limits are a questionable idea at best; as a stand-alone, without first attacking the problem of the bureaucracy, they are a terrible idea.
Ron Paul is the Prophet of the Quick Fix. “Just do this,” he shrills, “and everything will be ginger-peachy.” No, it won’t. No quick fix can abolish, or do an end run around, human nature—but that’s what Ron Paul is selling.
Don’t buy it.
I don’t agree with this article; it might have worked a little better if it had included any actual examples. Want to try again?
Ron Paul is a realist and has a long list of stuff that must be done. Your article is both inaccurate and misleading!
The Status Quo you defend is the fools that sunk the ship America while claiming to know it all and while claiming “we have to past the bill to find out what is in it!!”
Ron Paul 2012!!!
Aren’t quick fixes seen as a temporary solution until a full solution can be implemented. For example a leaking pipe- instead of shutting off the water or patching the leak you would rather let it keep leaking until the piping is replaced?
That doesn’t make sense.
Your example of a turning water off for a water leak as a quick fix needs a little work. Turning water off isn’t a solution it’s done as a prelude to a fix. The trouble is that there are no quick fixes for most of the issues that RP is fighting. Anything done to a pipe to correct a leak is properly a “stop gap measure” until the actual problem can be fixed. Do some things need fixing? Definitely. Trouble is that most suggestions seem to be stop gaps instead of fixes.
…and how are those ‘ten year plans’ workingout for you?
I’m no fan of Ron Paul but this article says nothing. It’s like saying, “Ron Paul has cooties.” Blah blah blah
Actually, Dr. Paul has pointed out many times that there are no quick fixes, especially to the monetary system. He has said for a decade that the deeper we go into debt, and the more we inflate the currency, and the more we kick the can down the road and ignore our problems, the worse the the ultimate day of reckoning will be.
His only “quick fix” is to eliminate the $1.7 trillion debt to the Federal Reserve (most of which is “phony” debt anyway), but that is in the context of yielding one full year with no deficit in order to work out a balanced budget. The water-pipe analogy another commenter made is spot-on when you view it in this context.
Ordinary people, left and right, are tired of paying the inflation tax to fund war and welfare for other people, while we see our standard of living and civil liberties eroded. Ron Paul is but one voice for this, but it is laughable to call his worldview “simple” when he’s the only candidate from either major party who elaborates on his positions based on historical context and the actual theory behind them. The old man has his flaws, as do they all (and as do WE all, for that matter), but naive feeble-mindedness is definitely not one of them!
I will also note that all the “fixes” that Ron Paul suggests — quick or otherwise — move us toward what the Founders intended: small government, low taxes, and “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, and entangling alliances with none.”
Ron Paul is a revolutionary. Like a typical revolutionary, he does not think 5 minutes beyond the success of the revolution. He does not think about how he would govern, if he were put in charge. These guys think they just have to decree it, and it will be so.
You can see evidence of this in the last debate, when he was asked about getting something through the divided Congress. Totally flummoxed. Stammered like Obama.
Paul is not wrong about monetary policy, as far as some of the causes of problems, but after all this time running for President, and after all his preaching, I’d like to see a very detailed plan of what he would actually do. Pawlenty produced one. Ryan produced one. Where is Paul’s?
He’s all talk.
Ron Paul does have a plan and it is a great one. Just go to his website and read it rather than spewing blather.
He was not flummoxed. A 5 second delay before giving a thoughtful answer is flummoxed in your mind? You should have taken 5 seconds to think before writing this entire comment.
Malone calls it “flummoxed” because he is used to Ron Paul’s quick answers. M Malone is simply wrong.
@BuzzsawMonkey – So, let me get this straight: You are trying to tell us that a man who has been in congress longer than you have been alive, and saying the same thing since, is only attempting to ‘Quick Fix’ the problems we face as a nation?
I suppose you are in favor of the wars that are costing this nation TRILLIONS of dollars?
1) Get us out of the wars.
2) Bring the troops home.
3) Have the troops protect the borders.
4) Stop unnecessary foreign aid.
Those four things alone would solve many issues this nation faces today:
1) The money the US military would have spent overseas is spent here at home increasing the GDP of the country; thus, deflating the dollar (good).
2) Our borders would be more secure, and we could start to address the illegal immigration issue.
3) Deflation of the dollar due to less military spending; we wouldn’t have to print money (inflation) to fund illegal wars; we wouldn’t have to print money to finance military campaigns.
@Marc Malone – Flash in the pan revolution, huh? You’re happy with the direction we, as a nation, are heading? THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES HAS EXECUTIVE POWER AND CONGRESSIONAL AUTHORITY TO CONDUCT/DIRECT MILITARY OPERATIONS. President Dr. Ron Paul would not need congress for this; he would bring the troops home. Please, educate yourself.
This article is nothing but disinformation.
This article is nonsense the author has clearly not read or listened to Ron Paul. First time I heard of you pajamasmedia and the last time I will read anything you publish. Thanks for playing.
This article has no substance. It makes a vast generalization about “quick fixes” and refuses to back up this statement with examples. Even it did cite other “quick fixes” that had not worked in the past the article would still be non-sense. Try again and next time evaluate Ron Paul’s SPECIFIC policies rather than placing them under the broad generalization of “quick fixes”. Sorry to be harsh but honestly, there are enough bad opinion pieces on the internet (see the huffington post) and we can do better.
Ron Paul is a loon. If you support Ron Paul you aren’t really thinking. Ron Paul would be ok with every country having nuclear weapons and shooting them off. As long as it wasn’t at Ron Paul.
He’s a libertarian not a Republican. He runs on a lie so he can get elected.
While some of his domestic ideas seem spot on the rest of him is loony. Rand Paul now seems like a smart dude that can govern intelligently.
Ron Paul’s three biggies.
1) Bring our troops home save money.
2) Get rid of the Fed.
3) Make drugs legal.
Give or take a couple issues.
Bringing the troops home. In 1787 the world was 6 months wide, it is now 18 minutes wide. By the time a threat is at the border it is too late. In the last debate Paul’s argument about Iran nukes was suicidal. Iran is not pursuing nukes for a defensive posture to external threats, they intend to threaten with them. Further more Iran is not subject to classical deterrence, as John Bolton observed when a nation values the afterlife more than life, deterrence doesn’t work.
A major threat to the United State can now come from any failed state. 9/11 was hatched in a cave in Afghanistan. Forward posturing our defenses is the only rational way to counter a threat where it develops not waiting until it unleashed at home.
If you study history both World Wars isolationism and failure to act in the early stages when a conflict would have been isolated were contributing factors. Isolationism only has gotten us into two World wars.
The Fed. Is the Fed a mess? Yes, it is. Should it be more transparent? Of course. However it is congress that has the authority to “mint coin” and make monetary policy. They delegated that authority to The Fed.
I also think it’s pretty clear that we need one consistent monetary policy as a nation. But if the Fed were abolished who would set policy? Congress, to with the House directly. After the debt ceiling debates, does anyone what The House setting monetary policy and all the politics that go with that? The Fed may be bad, The House would be orders of magnitude worse.
De-criminalization of drugs. Do not tell me drugs are a victimless crime. I do foster care. Every single one of the kids I’ve care drugs are a primary cause of the parents being unable to care for the children. First is the damage to the children by in-utero drug use, second the drugs affects on the parents ability to care for the kids. The drugs simply become more important to the parent than the kid.
Each of Ron Paul’s solutions is a quick feel good sound good solution to large and difficult problems.
A non-interventionist foreign policy is not isolationism. In fact it is just the opposite. We interact with the rest of the world through trade and diplomacy. We no longer hold the high ground. We have become an empire.
The Fed serves the power elite and nothing else. Saying that’s okay because congress gave them that power is a ridiculous argument.
Ron Paul has never stated that drugs are not harmful, or victimless. Just that they should not be illegal. The principle of individual liberty either exists or it doesn’t. A person has a right to ingest any substance they like. There is no crime in that. A crime is committed when a person or a group of persons violate the rights of another person or persons. Drugs may or may not lead one to commit some crime, but until that point no legitimate law has been violated.
The second point that needs to be realized is that no laws are going to stop individuals from taking drugs. We even had an Amendment to the Constitution to prohibit alcohol. That idiocy gave us organized crime that is still with us to this day. In fact, the war on drugs has caused thousands of times more destruction to society than the actual individual drug use. It has become a cash cow for both the government (particularly law enforcement) and the drug dealers/cartels. Did the drugs being illegal stop any of the damage you say you have had to deal with.
How hypocritical is it that some drugs are legal while others are not.
I could go on and on, but the last point I want to make is about Dr. Paul himself. You’re last sentence couldn’t be further from the truth. Dr. Paul is an extremely deep and thoughtful man. His positions are never based on quick feel good solutions. They are based on deep, well thought out and consistent principles based on the first principles of non-aggression and individual liberty. He has spent a lifetime studying all of these important issues. He has written extensively on all of these subjects. You actually have to think past the initial emotional response to these issues to understand the truth he reveals underneath.
Peace
Too bad Ron Paul doesn’t want to legalize drugs, he wants to get the feds out of the matter and leave it to the states. Try again. You’ll come up with something eventually. “He’s too old” is usually the last resort.
Term limits work, dammit! A culture of corruption can only be constructed through many years of favor-trading and powerbroking by entrenched electeds who have a chokehold on the system. They’re also no different from the the civil service workers you accuse of lapsing into incompetent once they feel safe in their cushy positions–except the politicians have even less accountability. While it’s possible to fire a government worker for poor performance, they generally don’t have the resources of a campaign war chest to pay lawyers and consultants to spin that record away.
Step away from the keyboard and study your subject before casting your opinions around if you want to be taken seriously. Ron Paul has many ideas in his plans and he knows that he cannot change everything overnight and that much of the change America needs must come from a change in American attitudes.
Try again.
JCN: Hilarious! Complain about drug victims and yet not realize that the 40-year Federal war on drugs, which has cost us $2.5 trillion dollars has failed! It has created criminal drug cartels and fosters gangs and violence. It’s not unlike alcohol prohibition and the mafia.
Your foster kids parents are still getting the drugs aren’t they? Ron Paul only wants to decriminalize drugs at the Federal level, except for where the border is concerned – the laws aren’t Constitutional anyway. States already have their own laws. If they decide that that want to control and regulate drugs, the Feds need to butt out. Alaska has personal and medical use marijuana laws and we don’t have a problem with it, however, we have a major problem with alcohol. And there’s a serious problem with prescription drugs as well. America could cut down on a ton of crime and border issues if the states started addressing the drug issue from a medical standpoint. Insanity is continuing to do the same thing that isn’t working.
“Ron Paul is the Prophet of the Quick Fix. ‘Just do this [impose term limits],’ he shrills, ‘and everything will be ginger-peachy.’ ”
This seems like a paraphrase. Can you provide a direct quote that indicates that Ron Paul believes that term limits are a panacea, and that nothing more need be done to cure all that which ails the body politic?
The author’s claim about the downside of term limits is unargued-for. But many studies show that politicians tend to be co-opted by the system the longer they’re in office, and become more susceptible to corruption. Elections are often empty exercises in districts where incumbents are running. It’s good for entrenched bureaucrats if democracy is democracy in more than name? Who does the author expect to start dismantling bureaucrats’ inappropriate powers–the pols who have been glued to their seats for decades?