Newt Gingrich

You're kidding right SpiffCoug? Art I Section 8, Article II section 2 and the 2nd, 3rd, 9th and 10th amendments. But what you really want to read are the arguments in the anti-federalist and federalist papers (which the supreme court has used for interpretation) about the powers of the legislative and executive branches. Try Federalist 24-29, 74-75 and anti-federalist 2,3,8, 23-29, 69, 71,72 and most importantly AF 74 - "The President as Military King."



If the constitutional argument against current US foreign policy does not persuade you check out the utilitarian argument (ie the current policy just isn't the best regardless of what the Constitution says) in these four books:



The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (Authorized Edition) by Thomas H. Kean

Blowback, Second Edition: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire by Chalmers A. Johnson

Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism by Robert Anthony Pape

Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror by Michael Scheuer



I have never heard one person cite evidence indicating the US are better served by the current foreign policy than by the non-interventionist policy our country is founded on. The best you get is Michelle Bachmann lying about the contents of an IAEA report and being shot down by Ron Paul who apparently has the report memorized. But I am ready to listen to whatever evidence (preferably not made up like Bachmann's) you have to present.

If the foreign policy endorsed by the founder's is too old for you think about the foreign policy endorsed by Ronald Reagan.



Here's what former Reagan Senior Adviser Pat Buchanan said:



“Would Ronald Reagan have invaded Iraq? Would he have declared a doctrine of preventive war to keep any rival nation from rising to where it might challenge us? Would he have crusaded for ‘world democratic revolution’? Was Reagan the first neoconservative? This claim has been entered in the wake of his death. Yet, it seems bogus, a patent forgery, a fabricated claim to the Reagan legacy, worked up in the same shop where they made the documents proving Saddam was buying up all the yellowcake in Niger.”



“(Reagan) took the world as he inherited it. His mission was simple and clear: Defend the country he loved against the pre-eminent threat of the Soviet Empire, avoid war, for time was on our side, and accept the assistance of any friend who would stand with us. Reagan did not harbor some Wilsonian compulsion to remake the world in the image of Vermont.”

I'm one of the first to admit Ron Paul has some good points, but he is too far on the fringe. I agree with Paul (and Ezra Taft Benson) that we have overextended ourselves overseas and that we are not Team America World Police. But I disagree with Paul on how far we need to withdraw from international affairs. His attitudes towards our ally Israel is alarming, and his attitudes towards our greatest current enemy (Iran/Muslim extremism) is appalling.



Military isolationism in the 1700s, 1800s, and early 1900s worked. In the modern world, it's a pipe-dream to think that the US can completely withdraw from the world stage and survive. That's where Paul is not only wrong, but asinine. He's selling junk bonds, and the people who think they are informed because they love reading Orwell but are too dumb to realized that Orwell was a vehement Communist are gobbling his garbage up. Paul offers oversimplistic answers to simpleminded people, and that's where the danger lies. He promotes dangerous ideals like the infalliability of the Founding Fathers and the idea that the government of 1815 is what we need in 2015. You even fell for that one in calling for us to return to the policy of three slaveholders as if that was a citation to a flawless authority. It oversimplifies the debate and fools people into thinking that a newborn nation comprised of thirteen self-interested nations and its fragility is somehow an analogue for the modern United States. You've cited nothing in the Constitution itself that supports the ideal of isolationism itself--you merely cited checks and balances on the waging of war and the Federalist Papers.....you know, the same Federalist that opposed the Bill of Rights? I guess you want to get rid of those as well? You are aware that Madison himself cautioned against anyone using the Federalist Papers as an authoritative reflection of the intent of the Founders, but that they were merely intended to generate debate about the ratification of the Constitution, aren't you?



As for the 9/11 Commission Report, it calls for increased focus on diplomacy, but it falls well short of calling for isolationism. The Report can only be read logically to be calling for a two-headed approach--military and diplomatic against terrorism, not for the Ron Paul genre of isolationism.



As to the other books you've cited, the only author I've read is Pape, and I doubt you'd have cited him as a support of Ron Paul isolationism if you read his follow-up work "Cutting the Fuse." Rather than calling for wholesale isolationism like Paul professes, Pape calls for drawing down the number of troops in sensitive locales and a modern hybrid of 1930's offshore balancing.....a strategic reduction, yes. Wholesale abandonment of the international arena? Far from it.



Does the US need to pull back from overseas and focus investment at home? Yes. Do we need to abandon our allies and ignore our sworn enemies and eviscerate our ability to defend ourselves if need be? No. And the danger in Ron Paul is that he answers 'yes' to the second question with such conviction that it makes Michelle Bachmann look positively insane (who the fact-checkers decided was closer to the truth on the IAEA report than Paul, though they characterized both as 'misleading')

jvquarterback wrote:
If the foreign policy endorsed by the founder's is too old for you think about the foreign policy endorsed by Ronald Reagan.



Here's what former Reagan Senior Adviser Pat Buchanan said:



“Would Ronald Reagan have invaded Iraq? Would he have declared a doctrine of preventive war to keep any rival nation from rising to where it might challenge us? Would he have crusaded for ‘world democratic revolution’? Was Reagan the first neoconservative? This claim has been entered in the wake of his death. Yet, it seems bogus, a patent forgery, a fabricated claim to the Reagan legacy, worked up in the same shop where they made the documents proving Saddam was buying up all the yellowcake in Niger.”



“(Reagan) took the world as he inherited it. His mission was simple and clear: Defend the country he loved against the pre-eminent threat of the Soviet Empire, avoid war, for time was on our side, and accept the assistance of any friend who would stand with us. Reagan did not harbor some Wilsonian compulsion to remake the world in the image of Vermont.”

I'm sorry, but I couldn't hear what the idiot Buchanan (whose own presidential bid is a good model for what I expect out of Paul 2012) said over the noise of what Reagan actually did in Afghanistan, Angola, Granada, Iran, Lebanon and Nicaragua. Buchanan remembers lots of things about Reagan in a matter convenient to his own politics.....like most people these days who invoke Reagan.

Didn't see your answer to the question about missionaries so I'll go with another one for you:



Prior to US intervention in the 1950s in the middle east how many Americans were attacked by people from the middle east? How many have been attacked since then?



It was just as simple in the 1700s, the 1800s as it is now.



BTW do you know what Ronald Reagan said his worst mistake was as president? Sending troops to Lebanon.



Also funny how you try to call non-interventionism isolationism. That type of Orwellian double speak isn't working on the American people anymore. The embargoes your buddies are calling for in Iran are the very definition of isolationism.

Article I Section 8

To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;



Article II Section 2

The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States



No doubt the Congress has ruined the appropriations process in their effort to create continual war. And you along with every neo-con on the street who thinks we are constantly at war must mean the president is always the commander in chief but the Constitution would limit the ridiculous foreign policy of the US if people would only read it.



BTW your red herring garbage about slavery is so very lame. And let's just blow off the federalist and anti-federalist papers because Madison didn't get what he wanted from the supreme court. Ridiculous.

jvquarterback wrote:
BTW your red herring garbage about slavery is so very lame. And let's just blow off the federalist and anti-federalist papers because Madison didn't get what he wanted from the supreme court. Ridiculous.

I'm not the one that is appealing to the Founding Fathers and the Federalist as if they are gospel true. I am simply pointing out that both the Founding Fathers and the Federalist are imperfect and not the be-all-end-all of the argument. If pointing out that your foundational authority isn't flawless is a red herring, so be it.



As for your citations to the Constitution: where has Congress passed an appropriation running longer than two years? That provision serves to force Congress to reassess waging each at least every two years to decide if continued war is the best course. I don't understand how that becomes a Constitutional basis for isolationism. Instead, I see a check on the power of the executive to unilaterally wage war.



When has the President acted as Commander in Chief of the state militias when they are not in actual service of the United States? I read Article II to make the president Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy at all times, and of the state militias only when those state militias are called into the actual service of the federal government. Again, I fail to see any principle of isolationism in here.

Yeah, I didn't see the call for isolationism in the Constitution either. I do agree with Paul that we should limit our foreign involvement. I'd fully support closing bases and bring home troops from places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Germany, Japan, South Korea, etc.



I think Paul is naive if he thinks simply withdrawing from the world and telling countries like Iran that we just want to be left alone and we'll leave them alone will work.

Just a quick note on your slavery argument. The Constitution was a vast improvement over the Articles of Confederation (which placed no limits on slavery). Article I Section 9 prohibited the new government from stopping the importation of slaves until 1808. On January 1, 1808 the first day possible according to the Constitution Jefferson (one of those slave owners you malign) signed into law the prohibition of the importation of slaves. If only the US had followed the example of the English and purchased all the slaves at the time they were freed so many lives could have been saved.

The limits on the federal government are limits on foreign policy just like they are limits on domestic policy. But really I am appealing to the anti-federalist argument (AF74) about the president being a military king and Hamilton's rebuttal (F69-70 and 74-75). The idea of offensive wars and interventionist foreign policy was so anathema to the founders that they did not exclude it explicitly. The reference to the founders insistence on non-intervention is a rebuttal to the argument for the status quo.



Personally I like the reasoning behind the founders ideal of non-intervention, but there is ample evidence that an interventionist foreign policy does more harm than good and I have certainly referenced those arguments. You say we should draw down, but give no evidence for the benefit of keeping troops there. You cite Pape and the 9/11 Commission in their recommendations that we draw down troops - well why not withdraw them completely (which would still fit the recommendations)? You give no reason except that things are different now than they were in the 1800s. What things? What technology warrants the abandonment of a policy that worked for 120 years and Ron Paul says would have worked for the next 100? Nuclear bombs, ICBMs, conventional bombs, submarines, the combustion engine, guns, bows and arrows, atlatls?



Everything is different now is no argument at all against non-interventionism when a simple before and after review of the interventions is all that is needed to show we have been harmed by these interventionist actions. Again I ask you: How many Americans were harmed by people from the middle east before the US government began its interventionist policy? And how many have been harmed since they began the interventionist policy?



The failure of other Republican candidates to address this issue head on is part of what is making Ron Paul so popular. Being the only candidate willing to actually cut the size of government is probably a bigger reason but when you have a candidate like Cain who just blows off having to know anything about foreign policy or Bachmann who gets slammed in the debate when she misrepresents a UN report (BTW after watching that again I'm unsure if Bachmann knows that the IAEA is part of the UN but at least she tried to back up her claims) and the rest who just spout out the party line with no evidence backing up their position it lends credence to the guy who makes a reasoned, referenced argument.

I am an Independent voter, and I consider myself to be 80-90% Libertarian in my views, and I would not vote for Paul over Romney, or Johnson.



Paul would get his ass handed to him in a debate against Obama. It would be the JFK/Nixon debates all over again.



You would have the "cool and smooth" Obama 2.0 - versus the crotchety, crazy old Uncle in Paul. Not saying this is how it is, that is how it will be portrayed, and believed by the majority of americans.



Paul vs Obama = Jon McCain 2.0 vs Obama. It'll have the same effect.

Ron Paul would handle Obama the same way he handled Bachmann the other night. He would cite the facts. There is no other candidate who can do that. Paul's debate style would destroy Obama's faux intellectualism. The most beautiful thing about a Paul-Obama debate would be Paul repeatedly citing Obama's Constitutional law papers and the way Obama has destroyed the civil liberties he once pretended the Constitution was supposed to protect. I would pay good money to see that.



Romney over Paul - I guess that 80-90% libertarian view stops at the free market. No one who supported and supports the bailouts should be considered by anyone in the party that allegedly believes in the free market.

It's not going to be about facts.



McCain is not close to a conservative, but he used a conservative argument/viewpoint against Obama. How did that work out for him, again? Oh yeah, landslide victory for Obama and the liberal media. Paul is MUCH smarter than McCain OR Obama, but you would have the same results as 2008.

Sadly, facts and common sense aren't enough to convince people to vote for you. Ron Paul is more or less the Piggy of this election.

jvquarterback wrote:

Romney over Paul - I guess that 80-90% libertarian view stops at the free market. No one who supported and supports the bailouts should be considered by anyone in the party that allegedly believes in the free market.

The problem with the bailouts is that we don't know what would have happened sans bailout money. Did people take advantage of free money? did taxpayers get the bill? did the government pick winners and losers? all bad and all unfortunately yes. but that doesn't mean that the government didn't also inject a significant and required amount of stability and liquidity during the most volatile economic climate in our lifetimes.



I knew people on the floor in Wall Street and people who had front row seats to this whole thing who were scared out of their minds. Some of the market fluctuations we saw were 20+ standard deviations from the mean which I'm sure you know means they were virtually impossible. And we saw fluctuations of those magnitudes not once but multiple times in the same year. The odds of that happening are mind-bogglingly small. But they did.



I bring this up because I believe we were very, VERY close to seeing the entire system collapse. And by that I mean, economic ruin 100x worse than what we saw on a global scale. Hard to say what would have happened without government bailouts and the Fed's actions to get liquidity in the market but ultimately the system didn't fail. And as much as I hate how much of the money was spent, the bailout was part of the scenario that allowed us to have small, but positive GDP growth the last few quarters.



For the record, I believe in regulated free markets. 100% free markets have been tried and failed. They don't voluntarily pay taxes for things like defense and roads, they employ little children, have terrible working conditions, have no respect for intellectual property, and create natural and unbreakable monopolies. Regulation can create a level playing field but Obama has pushed it too far and the burden is suppressing innovation and his white house and this Congress has introduced volatility that has completely killed risk-taking.

Ron Paul is forcing the debate in the Republican party to factually evaluate foreign affairs - and he is winning. Ron Paul would own Obama in a one on one debate just like he's owned Perry, Santorum and Bachmann when they went one on one - every time they did it Paul jumped in the polls afterward. Gingrich and Romney haven't gone one on one with him which I think is smart on their part. When they have voiced disagreement with Paul they've piggy-backed the arguments of Santorum and Bachmann (great rhetorical manuever). I'm not sure Obama would accept a debate with Paul (or any GOP candidate for that matter) next time around if his poll numbers hold.



If the GOP nominee wants to win the presidency next time around they will have to make the debate about the facts - no matter who it is - if they want to win.

Good job Ron Paul - you totally OWNED the guys who aren't even polling 10% combined!

The key is Ron Paul owns his opponents in one-on-one exchanges because he cites data. He would own Obama in a debate. Think about it one guy who can't put two words together without a teleprompter and the other who could memorize everything the other has ever said or written in a couple days debate prep. Anyone who wants to see Obama destroyed on the stage should be pulling for Ron Paul.



As for people who thinks facts don't win elections, how in the world do you explain Paul is now polling at 27.5% in Iowa now? You think all of those Republicans woke up one day as non-interventionists? Six months of being exposed to facts is what has brought people to Ron Paul. If the nation is exposed to six months of Ron Paul shoving facts in Obama's grill they will come around too.

jvquarterback wrote:
As for people who thinks facts don't win elections, how in the world do you explain Paul is now polling at 27.5% in Iowa now? You think all of those Republicans woke up one day as non-interventionists? Six months of being exposed to facts is what has brought people to Ron Paul. If the nation is exposed to six months of Ron Paul shoving facts in Obama's grill they will come around too.

How do you explain it? Quite simply. The same reason Michelle Bachman rose in the polls. The same reason Ricky Perry rose in the the polls. The same reason Hermann Cain rose in the polls. The same reason Newt Gingrich rose in the polls. They're not Mitt Romney. The Republican party is trying on all comers to challenge Romney. All of them have shot up the polls and then been found wanting. So they fell at the same speed with which they rose.

CougarClaw wrote:

The problem with the bailouts is that we don't know what would have happened sans bailout money.

Yes we do. The poor investments would have been liquidated and the economy would have corrected itself. Just as it has in the past. The government wouldn't be throwing more of my money down the drain into failed businesses. The doomsday garbage was just that - garbage. And now that the banks have succeeded in robbing the people, you are offering excuses for Mitt Romney's abandonment of free markets.

CougarClaw wrote:

100% free markets have been tried and failed.

False. Name one time or place where a 100% free market has existed.

CougarClaw wrote:

They don't voluntarily pay taxes for things like defense and roads,

So what? Maybe roads aren't what a free people would choose - maybe it would be railroads or something else. If they won't pay for defense then they won't be defended. Fine.

CougarClaw wrote:

they employ little children, have terrible working conditions,

Evaluate the employment levels of children in fields where the government became involved (manufacturing) and fields they ignored (farming). You'll notice a difference. The rate of decrease of child labor was faster for farming.



Now look at injury rates prior to and after OSHA began regulating working conditions. The rate of change in workplace injuries slowed and has come to a standstill now that there is government regulation to protect companies from the free market of having to provide a safer workplace to entice workers to join their company

CougarClaw wrote:
have no respect for intellectual property, and create natural and unbreakable monopolies.

It's funny you put these two together. Did you know that the first patent law was called the "Statute of Monopolies?" Oh, and are you still paying royalties to the guy who invented fire? There has never existed a monopoly without the use of force by the state. Find one. They've never existed. But I could find 187,000 state granted monopolies in the form of patents in the last year.

CougarClaw wrote:
Regulation can create a level playing field

No it cannot. A fellow named George Stigler won a Nobel Prize for describing regulatory capture. That is the use of regulation by large, established companies to prevent innovation.



You are right that innovation has stopped but you've been deceived to think that the answer is anything less than freedom and free markets.



America did the best when it was the freest of countries. If you want America to lead the world again it will have again become the freest society on earth. Anyone who supports the bailouts would prevent America from attaining that position.