I can’t help myself, I am head-over-heels for Ron Paul. If that makes me a “Paulite,” I gladly wear the mantle. Being such a strong supporter, I want to take a moment to address some of the criticism of Dr. Paul and clearly present not just his stance of some of these issues, but his reasoning behind them. See, Dr. Paul is not given much time to speak in the Republican debates. It’s blatant media censoring, and it needs to stop. Also, Ron Paul, being as honorable as he is, honestly tries to stay within the alloted speaking time, unlike some of his hot-air-filled peers. On top of that, a debate setting, with so many candidates on the stage, simply does not have enough time to delve deeply into any issue. For the flip-flopping candidates, this is good thing. For Ron Paul, who never waivers on his stance, it never allows him to let the American people understand his deeply held convictions.

One of the big issues with conservative voters is gay marriage. It seems that a large chunk of the conservative base is supporting a Constitutional ban on gay marriage which Ron Paul opposes. The Constitution is a very complete and precise document, which expressly says that these types of issues are to be handle by the people, on the state level. How can the people achieve what they want to achieve in this nation, if the federal government is always overruling their will? Our forefathers were some pretty smart guys and they wanted America to be as free and full of individual liberty as possible. Our history tells us that when the federal government intervenes and uses the Constitution to remove liberties, it backfires. One groups’ morality, cannot, and should not, dictate how people live their personal lives. You may object to gay marriage, but it’s part of someone’s personal life, and really, not the government’s business. Whether two gay persons want to contract themselves to each other for life is not the government’s business, and it’s not yours either. Marriage, whether gay or straight, is not the government’s business. But, as long as our government does provide tax benefits and legal benefits to people who do choose to contract themselves, then the government has no right to deny other tax payers that same preference based on their private sexual activities. Our government is supposed to be impartial. This Constitutional ban campaign is the drive of a religious group, one that I belong to, hoping to enforce their moral ethics on another group and deny them of government civil rights. The church is not the government. The will of the church should not sway the government. The church has every right to oppose gay unions, the government does not. If homosexuality is not illegal, then the government should treat its citizens equally under the law. That’s all there is to it. It’s a state’s right issue, no matter what. That is Ron Paul’s stance. If the people of Texas do not want gay marriage – guess what? They will vote against it. If the people of Vermont do want gay marriage – guess what? They will have it. Both groups would be extremely angry to find Washington overruling their decision on the matter. It robs the people of their voice and sends the message that the people are not smart enough to handle their own decisions on these issues. That’s a dangerous statement to make.

Terry Schiavo brings up the next issue. In the Values Voter debate, Ron Paul voted no to the question of whether he would “pursue or support legislation to protect the cognitively disabled from being dehydrated to death by having their food and water taken away.”

I was surprised by his vote at first. It gave me a good long pause. He is a doctor, and pro-life, what made him vote this way? You can read his response to the Terry Schiavo issue here. This comes down to the federal government not needing to be involved. Ideally, this issue should be handled by the patient’s guardian and doctor. In Terry Schiavo’s case, the feud over guardianship was the central issue. Who had the right to decide her fate? The laws in place in each state need to be upheld, and if the people of that state want new laws, the burden falls to them to change or create them. This is the way our government is set up to work. We create serious problems for ourselves and set dangerous precedents when the federal government is allowed to bend the will of the people. That simply is not the scope of government on the federal level. If protecting life is important to you, and you feel that Terry should have been saved, work hard on your state level to enact laws that do protect life. We cannot have a democratic republic if we continue to allow the federal government to control every aspect of our daily lives. The government is doing that every day because we have become lazy, apathetic, and quite willing to allow them to handle every issue. What I find ironic, is that conservatives are vehemently opposed to Roe vs. Wade, but it’s the same issue in reverse. It was not the place of Washington to decide on that issue either. Abortion is also in the realm of state’s rights. The liberal states will, no doubt, find in favor of abortion, while more conservative states will be against it.

I reiterate again, that the government on the federal level was never intended to have so much influence over our lives and decisions. You cannot have a nation as large, and as diverse as we are, by imposing the will of the government over the people. I have heard the argument that being a strict Constitutionalist is no longer plausible in our society, or that the Constitution is a little outdated.

If you look at history, however, the times when we did strictly follow the Constitution, our nation prospered. The farther we stray from that document, it seems the worse off we become. We are taking away liberties in the form of the Patriot Act, we are wrongfully imprisoning people, we have revoked habeas corpus, we are employing torture tactics on prisoners, we are inflating our money and making it worthless, we are borrowing billions daily from China and other nations whom we are barely on friendly terms with, we are experiencing the worst national debt in our country’s history, and we are invading nations without just cause and imposing our will upon them. How much father can we slip, before we become a socialist nation and burgeoning empire? Do these things happen all at once, or is it the slow chipping away of liberty bit by bit that finds us one day in a scary new world? Rome did not fall in a day, my friends.