What if Romney wasn't running?

[nasaal]

There is always a Romney. It is a nice hypothetical to play with, but the truth is far more sad. There will always be that guy who doesn't really offend too many in his own party and plays politics as usual. If it wasn't Romney, the party would ask someone else to do it. Probably Huntsman would take his place.

 

[Minlawc]

"...Imagine there's no heaven..."

Wow... I'm not the only one who thought of this song after seeing the thread title.

And I agree there will always be a Mitt Romney.

 

[iGGz]

)()(

 

[Babylon]

Thank you so much for your reply. I disagree heartily. I think the federal government has been horrific and intolerable for its entire history. I personally have found it horrifically intolerable at least since I was 12. It was a monster when it was slaughtering 80 people by burning them alive in their church in Waco, Texas (and then arresting the survivors. And then imprisoning them even after a jury found them not guilty). It was a monster when it was slaughtering Nez Perce Indians for having the temerity to run away from the army to Canada. It was a monster when it was slaughtering southern civilians for the crime of, umm, living in the South.

There has always been a need for a "Paul". The need for a man with a backbone and a belief in liberty to stand up and slay the monster.

I disagree. I've been a libertarian for basically my whole life. I noticed freedom-fighters. I made Harry Browne signs and called into radio shows for him in 1996. He was urgently needed then. The debt was oppressive. The government was enormous and out of control. We were a socialistic and tyrannical country and needed to be turned around. Unfortunately, that didn't happen...yet... not in the 90s.

I cannot adequately express how completely and vehemently I disagree with this statement. Those in political power are almost invariably the most reprehensible and hideously evil men available in the population. It's an incentive problem.

Completely inaccurate and delusional view of history. During 1917, the government was arresting people for eating meat on incorrect days of the week, for refusing to be paid murderers, and for reading the Constitution in public. During the 1930s, the government was paying farmers to destroy harvested food (actually, they still are, I think). Evil tyrants were in charge, tyrannizing the public. Evil tyrants are always in charge, and they always tyrannize the public.

It's an incentive problem, man, an incentive problem! There is always an ample supply of evil men, and large hordes of misguided ones to buttress them. Even initially good men tend to be corrupted by power.

This brings us back sort of to the topic of the thread. If Mitt Romney didn't exist, someone else just as bad would. Do you really think that Mitt Romney is more evil and corrupt than Theodore Roosevelt? Evil and corrupt men have lived in every generation throughout history. The problem is the power available in the government, enabling them to amplify their evil. We need to destroy that power. To throw the "ring of power" into the fires of Mordor. That is the only solution.

I applaud your creative use of adjectives and adverbs.

I don't mean to disagree with you in the particulars.

And, maybe during a heated campaign isn't the time or place to voice such things....

But, where I'm coming from is a perspective viewing 10,000 years of human history.

Countries come and go.
Constitutions come and go.

What enslaves us is man... not political systems.

There is nothing magical about the United States Constitution.
In 500 years, it will be but a memory.

It's the principles behind it -- liberty, respect for life, and property -- that make it special.

All ages and all countries need men of good will to fight for these principles.

The Constitution is but a tool to assist in that fight.

The Constitution in and of itself, however, is... meh... I could have written something better.

 

[helmuth_hubener]

He has a long history proving he is capable of resisting the urge to power. That is incredibly rare, and something to be absolutely cherished.

Yes! If Ron Paul had never lived, and you had Ron Paul's career described to you, you'd have to dismiss it as wildly unrealistic and improbable. You'd just have to. Men who can stay firm, steadfast, and immovable, who can remain clean in the face of wave upon wave of sludge and slime, men who can resist the temptation of overwhelming amounts of power, men like that are not seen every day. No they're not.

Ron Paul is exceptional, and truly a hero in every sense and every dimension of his life, to me.

 

[J_White]

i m sure in that case someone else would have been running - Christie, Palin, hell even McCain or Ghouliani !!

Would we be winning? Would the establishment find another darling to push? Just an interesting thing to think about.

 

[heavenlyboy34]

w00t!

Thank you so much for your reply. I disagree heartily. I think the federal government has been horrific and intolerable for its entire history. I personally have found it horrifically intolerable at least since I was 12. It was a monster when it was slaughtering 80 people by burning them alive in their church in Waco, Texas (and then arresting the survivors. And then imprisoning them even after a jury found them not guilty). It was a monster when it was slaughtering Nez Perce Indians for having the temerity to run away from the army to Canada. It was a monster when it was slaughtering southern civilians for the crime of, umm, living in the South.

There has always been a need for a "Paul". The need for a man with a backbone and a belief in liberty to stand up and slay the monster.

I disagree. I've been a libertarian for basically my whole life. I noticed freedom-fighters. I made Harry Browne signs and called into radio shows for him in 1996. He was urgently needed then. The debt was oppressive. The government was enormous and out of control. We were a socialistic and tyrannical country and needed to be turned around. Unfortunately, that didn't happen...yet... not in the 90s.

I cannot adequately express how completely and vehemently I disagree with this statement. Those in political power are almost invariably the most reprehensible and hideously evil men available in the population. It's an incentive problem.

Completely inaccurate and delusional view of history. During 1917, the government was arresting people for eating meat on incorrect days of the week, for refusing to be paid murderers, and for reading the Constitution in public. During the 1930s, the government was paying farmers to destroy harvested food (actually, they still are, I think). Evil tyrants were in charge, tyrannizing the public. Evil tyrants are always in charge, and they always tyrannize the public.

It's an incentive problem, man, an incentive problem! There is always an ample supply of evil men, and large hordes of misguided ones to buttress them. Even initially good men tend to be corrupted by power.

This brings us back sort of to the topic of the thread. If Mitt Romney didn't exist, someone else just as bad would. Do you really think that Mitt Romney is more evil and corrupt than Theodore Roosevelt? Evil and corrupt men have lived in every generation throughout history. The problem is the power available in the government, enabling them to amplify their evil. We need to destroy that power. To throw the "ring of power" into the fires of Mordor. That is the only solution.

+rep

 

[helmuth_hubener]

I applaud your creative use of adjectives and adverbs.

I don't mean to disagree with you in the particulars.

No worries!

And, maybe during a heated campaign isn't the time or place to voice such things....

It's the best time... because people are listening!

But, where I'm coming from is a perspective viewing 10,000 years of human history.

Countries come and go.
Constitutions come and go.

Yes, yes, I'm nodding my head here.

What enslaves us is man... not political systems.

Yes, though different systems have different incentives. I'll come back to that.

There is nothing magical about the United States Constitution.
In 500 years, it will be but a memory.

It's the principles behind it -- liberty, respect for life, and property -- that make it special.

All ages and all countries need men of good will to fight for these principles.

The Constitution is but a tool to assist in that fight.

The Constitution in and of itself, however, is... meh... I could have written something better.

Absolutely! This sentiment is so true. All of this is so true.

Let's bring it back to Paul and Romney. Looking back over 5,000 years of history (we don't actually have good written history going back 10,000 years), generally freedom loses. Actually, generally freedom didn't even get that far that it even had a chance to lose! Generally it didn't have a voice or anyone on its side. Freedom just wasn't an option considered. I'm talking about at least in the major civilizations: Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, China, India, etc. -- maybe out in the boondocks people had freedom, I don't know. If you take any given 200-year period in Chinese history, was there necessarily a "Paul"? Was there anyone articulating and standing up for the ideas of liberty? Most likely not. You see what I'm saying?

A Romney is inevitable. If one Romney doesn't happen to get into politics, another Romney will. It's just incentives. There's this monolithic apparatus sitting there, just waiting and begging to be captured and used to further your ambitions. You will always have lots of Romneys in government, and many more waiting in the wings. Term-limited democracy is a particularly bad system in its incentives because you have every incentive to milk the system for everything you can get right now, totally ravage the country, and four years down the road? Who cares! Someone else's problem four years down the road!

A Paul, on the other hand, is anything but inevitable. Absolutely no incentives exist in the system to be a Paul. Nothing encourages it. Everything discourages it. It is not in anyone's economic interests to be a Paul. You could go for hundreds of years (like ancient China, see above) without any Paul, without any statesman for liberty, much less someone in power fighting for it within the system. Public Choice economics would basically say you will never have someone like Paul, because all the economic incentives are against that happening. But Public Choice discounts the importance of ideology, that is, ideas and principles that people will follow even when it's not in their own personal, narrow, economic self-interest. Ideas are everything. Integrity is indispensable. With the Ron Paul campaign we have both. As affa said, that's something as rare and precious as gold, and that we should cherish.