NH INSIDER

Okay, so I admit it... Ron Paul has been my favorite Congressman for a long time, and I've followed his career on and off for about 8 years.  I've read and watched a lot of his speeches, and I've long considered him to be the most thoughtful, forward-thinking person in the U.S. Congress.

Dr. Paul really got my attention in 1999 when he pushed legislation to end registration for selective service (a.k.a. "the draft").  This is a big deal to me because when I registered for selective service, I was coerced into agreeing that if the government ordered me to do so, I would stop what I am doing, put on a uniform, and begin killing people. 

Some individuals may be fine with that agreement, and I suppose they should be free to make it, but I am not fine with it.  In my mind, killing is only justified in self-defense, and thus, I only support military action which is fundamentally defensive.  I can support a police action to capture known criminals such as the individuals who planned the 9-11 attacks, but I can't support most of what our government currently does around the world.  Since the invasion of Iraq, which to me was grotesquely immoral, I've had an increasingly difficult time convincing myself to pay taxes to such a government.  If Congress won't vote to defund this endless war, then I'm afraid taxpayers may have to do it themselves.

But anyway, I want to get back to the draft...

This is an issue where the pro-liberty position, the truly moral position, is painfully simple.  If we are forced into a service for which we would not volunteer, then we do not own ourselves.  If we do not own ourselves, we are not free people.  This would have been a no-brainer for the founding fathers, who constructed our government based on the notion that individuals were born free and sovereign. 

To the signers of the Declaration of Independence, it was "self-evident" that people were born with "inalienable rights" and that a legitimate government "derives its just powers from the consent of the governed."  Over time, we have been successful in extending the Declaration's promise to individuals who happen to be female and/or non-white.  But we've gone in a radically wrong directon on other fronts, and the draft provides a perfect example.  Forced service is a form of slavery, period.

Paul's proposal to end registration for selective service was actually gaining momentum until 2001, when "everything changed."  Unfortunately, the biggest changes that occured in the wake of 9-11 were self-imposed.  Far too many Americans lost their hope for a free and prosperous future, and this rendered them especially susceptible to manipulation by authoritarians within our government.  Fear led the American people to support yet another wave of anti-liberty reforms at home, and it led them to support an immoral, aggressive war abroad.

Today, unfortunately, there is no discussion of ending the draft.  We certainly don't hear it from the top-tier Democrats who are posing as anti-aggression.  Some top Democrats (Chris Dodd and John Kerry come to mind) want to start drafting people for domestic service, so it's clear they won't be leading a fight to abolish selective service registration.  Yes, "Volunteer or Else!" has now taken its place among the many anti-liberty positions which enjoy strong, bipartisan support in our broken two-party system.
 

So the Draft Is Here to Stay?  But What Else? 

We don't talk about the draft much anymore, despite the fact that it is radically inconsistent with American values.  A large segment of people who call themselves "values voters" tend to stick with issues that once belonged to the now-defunct Religious Right, and to the existing list of Christian issues, many "values voters" have added their unqualified support for perpetual war against a new monster they call "Islamofascism."

This isn't news, really, to me or anybody else.  In fact, it reminds me of my very early career as a writer. In 1998, as a senior in college, I published my first commentary on U.S. foreign policy for the university newspaper.  Senator Clinton's husband had just flipped a few more bombs than usual at Iraq (reminding them who was the boss, I supposed).  It had been enough bombs to  make not only the Iraqi news but our news, and I noticed that an awful lot of high-profile Christians were the ones egging on further aggression.  I responded with an editorial that wound up being run under the headline "Christians Should Oppose War."

And they should, now as then. 

Which brings me to the...

Values Voter Debate 

The website ValuesVoterDebate.com is subtitled "America's Largest Voting Block."  And they're probably right in a sense -- most voters are not terribly well-informed on the nuances of political or economic theory, but they do know what their own values are, and they like to see those values expressed by the politicians they support.

So we all vote based on values, but the self-identified "values voters" take a particular interest in Christian values.   And when these folks had their debate Sept. 17, they got a pretty good Christian earful from Dr. Paul about the morality of our aggressive foreign policy.

In 8 years following Dr. Paul's career, I'd never heard him really mention his own religious beliefs except in passing.  Apparently he has no trouble discussing his views when asked.  Here's what Dr. Paul had to say when asked to tell voters about his personal faith and what it meant to his life:

I get to my God through Christ.  Christ to me is a man of peace.  He is for peace.  He is not for war... I strongly believe that there is a Christian doctrine of just war, and I believe the nation has drifted from that.  No matter what the rationales are, we have drifted from that, and it's very, very dangerous.  And I see it in many ways being un-Christian.

Christ is for love and forgiveness and turning the other cheek , for peace.  And to justify what we do in the name of Christianity, I think, is very dangerous and not part of what Christianity is all about.  Christ came for spiritual reasons, not secular war and boundaries and geography.  And yet we are now dedicating so much of our aggressive activity in the name of God... he is the prince of peace.  That is what I see from my God and through Christ.  I vote for peace.

There are some poorly edited videos available on YouTube, but I prefer this audio version of Dr. Paul's performance in the Values Voter Debate.   Totally worth a listen, especially the four-minute closing statement, which begins as follows:

We have been blessed to be able to live in the greatest country in the world.  We've had the best contract between the people and the government, but we're losing it, and we have to realize that.  We have resorted to going to Washington for everything.  We cannot go to Washington to dictate to us how to improve our personal behavior.  You don't dictate, you don't legislate virtue...

I only hope "values voters" will listen.  And to all you non-Christians out there, if you're going to have a Christian in the White House, wouldn't you prefer a Christian who practices the virtue of tolerance?