There are those who support Ron Paul’s position on the war in Iraq, but that seems to be as far as it goes. They still want entitlements, nationalized health care, the redeployment of troops to situations like Darfur, gun control, etc. It’s almost as if they can’t wait to spend the tax dollars that they feel would become available with the end of the war.

I guess my main concern is that they will use Ron Paul to fit their agenda…take what they want and leave the rest.

I wonder if perhaps it really is naive to think that we can go back to 1776 and stay there. My instincts tell me that we can and we should, but maybe the communists and neo-cons are onto something; maybe a One World Government really is the destiny of man. If it is, surely it will happen eventually, whether or not we let Ron Paul play in the sandbox for 4 or 8 years.

So why aren’t people willing to give 1776 one last chance?

I have been having a lot of difficulty finding native US citizens that know anything about the constitution, or the culture that created it. And that helps explain why Ron Paul is often viewed as “crazy” by many voters and the media.

“Most of them seem to be web savvy, with the ability, at minimum, to hack into any news studio’s voting system, be it text or Internet based.”

Time and time again we have had to discredit this piece of shoddy reporting. Dr. Paul’s supporters are _not_ gaming any polls, flooding any vote counts, or hacking any news organizations computers. This canard seems to be the only response that intelligence-limited journalists employ to discredit the overwhelming support that Dr. Paul receives in these online polls.

Let’s face facts: the internet revolution is well underway. People of all ages and of all political persuasions now have the ability to get online, read the news, and respond swiftly to online solicitations of their opinion.

This ‘mythic’ ability is not restricted to some specially-gifted technologists who happen to support Dr. Paul.

When news organizations seek to find out the opinion of Internet-connected citizens, they find that a great many of them like Dr. Paul. If these organizations are honest, they admit this to their readership.

If they are dishonest, they claim (as you have) that Dr. Paul’s supporters have corrupted the vote through nefarious technical black magic. This is nonsense, plain and simple.

Please correct your article if you intended this comment as jest. Please correct your thinking if you intended otherwise.

(I am not a Dr. Paul supporter, intending to support Barack Obama. But I find it distasteful in the extreme to hear this whisper campaign gain traction by innuendo.)

Blame regulations, not immigrants:

A) Prohibit someone from obtaining an ID legally.
B) Make an ID mandatory for getting a job.

Of course this is going to lead to people getting an ID illegally. You can change one or preferabbly both of these rules and the “major cause of identity theft” would disappear.

A lot of them “assimilate” by using someone else’s Social Security number. How would you like it if your credit rating, security clearance, or job prospects were ruined by someone else messing up your SSN records?

Are you joking about that last part?

If you truly think that they assimilate then I’d have to assume that you live somewhere very far north. In south texas, you’d have an extremely hard time finding an illegal immigrant who speaks english, knows what the Constitution is, or knows anything about the culture. Most just know about the law that coerces hospitals into treating them for free and the law that coerces taxpayers to provide “educating” their kids.

But that’s just my experience.

Agreed. I think that the public roads, etc. are the primary source of the immigration issue. Otherwise it would simply be or not be trespassing.

You can have my social
-my social services.
They are not that useful. I would say.
I will rely on my nearby neighbors
I’m stuck with them anyway.

About immigration…
well, i don’t know
If you put our troops on the border
and invite trade with Mexico
there will be more soldiers in bars there
but at least they’ll be out of Iraq.

[yes, the rhyming's weak, just keep hummming]

However, my larger question is this – when Ron Paul does loose, where do all these youth go? They’re grooving about rights and freedoms, but how many of them are libertarians in any real sense? What they are is semi-socialists, in a lot of cases, who are now closer to libertarianism than they ever have been before. We owe it to them to bring them the libertarian message, full strength, not watered down, and let them know what libertarianism is all about. It’s not good enough to tell them “well, if you like rights and want to end the war, that’s good enough” – of course, we still appreciate their support for Ron Paul, but we should also be trying to explain to them why Paul holds the positions he does – why it’s not peaceful and loving, for example, to ban guns, or protect the environment.

The only Mexican’s I’ve seen in the US were either fairly well off tourists (presumably legal) or were people who worked hard so they could send some money home to their families (presumably illegal). Neither group seemed interested in revolution or overthrow of the government. My guess is these supremacist groups in the US are composed mostly of US Citizens.

Thank you for all your comments and e-mails, of both the pro and con variety.

I do not agree with Mr. Paul on every issue, I only agree with myself on every issue. Mr Paul’s take on immigration, I believe, is unkind and does not follow logically from his support of free trade. If goods should be allowed to freely flow across borders, unmolested by the political class, why not people?

Borders on a map, citizenship itself, is a political concept that the workers would do well to throw into the dustbin of history.

Be that as it may, Mr. Paul is quite the Jeffersonian, and I admire him enough to give him my time and money. I hope many more do the same.

I have not commented on immigration previously, but I would add to your point that I do not believe it is inconsistent with an Austrian view to accept the notion that a voluntarily established community has the right to determine who its members will be.

TT