Finally, a choice in 2008 by John Silveira

Back in 1980, conservative friends, knowing I was a Libertarian, exhorted me to vote for Ronald Reagan instead of the Libertarian candidate, Ed Clark. Their claim was that we had to get a conservative in the White House and get rid of Jimmy Carter. Voting for Clark, they said, was tantamount to throwing my vote away. But I didn't vote for Reagan, and after he got into office he forgot all about his campaign promises to roll back the size of the federal government. Government grew larger and our basic freedoms grew smaller. I knew I had voted correctly. Later, I would refuse to vote for either of the Bushes or Dole because I felt the promises they made in an effort to get my vote were empty. Again I was right, especially regarding the current President Bush, whose promises of limited government were as empty as Reagan's.

It's now a matter of record that Republicans in power for the past decade-plus, even while they were in control of both the White House and Congress, have outspent the Democrats who preceded them, and they passed more laws restricting individual rights. They forsook almost every conservative promise they made.

The future of American politics had come to look pretty grim to me. However, just when I've all but given up, there's a possibility—not a promise, but a chance—that come 2008, we'll have a real choice when we go to the polls. This won't be a fringe party candidate. This will be a player from one of the two major parties. It will once again be a Republican.

On January 11, 2007, Ron Paul filed papers to create an exploratory committee that will allow him to raise money to make a run for the Republican presidential nomination. Who is Ron Paul? He's a nine-time Republican congressman from the 14th congressional district in Texas. He's an M.D. (a refreshing change from the stream of lawyers who fill the halls of Congress and our state legislatures). In 1988 he was the Libertarian Party's candidate for President and garnered some 400,000 votes nationwide. It was enough to place him third in the presidential race. He may have changed parties from Libertarian to Republican, but he's philosophically still a Libertarian.

Paul regularly votes against anything that would lead to even bigger government including government spending, initiatives, or taxes. In fact, he votes against anything that's unconstitutional, even if he's running contrary to the Republican Party line or his constituents' wishes.

He's seen right through the so-called "War on Terror" and realizes it's a war on individual freedoms. He is one of the few Congressmen to tell the people no one in Congress was allowed to read the PATRIOT Act before it was voted on, and that's why he refused to vote for it. Now there are plenty of Congressmen who wish they hadn't voted for it. Too late.

He voted against the Iraq War Resolution. How many in Congress on that day wish they could go back in time and change their votes so they could say they voted against this ridiculous "war"?

He didn't have to wait for the 1994 Contract with America to espouse term limits. He's advocated them for years.

He has opposed the Central American Free Trade Agreement because it will increase the size of government.

According to the National Taxpayers Union, he has no peer in Congress working on behalf of taxpayers.

When he talks about limited government and more individual freedoms, he actually means it. And for you skeptics out there, unlike virtually any other candidate, he has a voting record that proves it.

What'll we get if Paul is in the White House? He advocates a real currency, based on a commodity, gold, not one furnished to the United States by that private corporation called the Federal Reserve, which is based on another commodity, paper.

Can he win? When he decided to return to Congress in 1996, the people elected him, even when the Republican Party powers-that-be didn't want him to run again and backed the incumbent, Greg Laughlin, who portrayed Paul's policies as extreme and eccentric. Extreme and eccentric? Read the Constitution; those are Paul's principles. We haven't seen an elected official on Capitol Hill who believed in those principles in my lifetime, other than Ron Paul. And we haven't seen a President in the White House who paid more than lip service to the Constitution since long before FDR. He went on to beat his Democrat that November. The Republicans are now stuck with him.

He's not only a favorite of Libertarians and old-time conservative Republicans, but he's also garnered support from many Democrats who like his positions on individual liberties and opposition to our intervention in Iraq.

For those of you who have said you want smaller government, more real rights (the God-given or Natural kind, as opposed to the ones issued by the state), this is your chance. And for those of you who claim you don't like either Republicans or Democrats, but have to vote for the lesser of two evils so you won't be throwing your vote away, this is your chance. If Paul is nominated, the choice will be there.

Finally, a choicein 2008

By John Silveira

Finally, a choice
in 2008