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Ron Paul Doesn’t Understand the Constitution

By: Brookhaven (Diary)  |  December 16th, 2011 at 02:43 PM  | 

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Ron Paul is touted as the guy that really understands our Constitution and the various roles of the federal and state governments. However, when doing research on Ron Paul’s position on abortion at http://prolifeprofiles.com/ronpaul I found a huge hole in Ron Paul’s understanding of the Constitution.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The above quote from The Declaration of Independence is the foundational idea of our entire system of government. Our individual rights come not from a piece of paper, a government, or a mutual agreement among men; but from an entity that is at a higher level than all of them: God.

Unalienable simply means that something cannot be seperated from a person under any circumstances. In this case it means our God given rights cannot be sperated from us by any person or entity–not the federal government, not any state government, not a foreign government, nobody.

The next sentence in The Declaration of Independence explains why our governments (all of them, federal, state, and local) exist.

 That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

The purpose of the government (any government–federal or state) is to secure our God given, unalienable rights.

When you examine Ron Paul’s positions on abortion, you realize two things:

  1. Ron Paul does not grasp the concept of God given, unalienable rights.
  2. Ron Paul does not understand that the purpose for every government is to secure our God given, unalienable rights.

Several of the founding fathers opposed adding a bill of rights to the Constitution. They argued that if you enumerated a list of rights in the Constitution, eventually people would come to view this as a comprehensive list of our rights, instead of just a subset. That is exactly the trap Ron Paul has fallen into.

If the right to life to life is a God given, unalienable right, and the federal government was established to secure those rights, shouldn’t the federal government have a role in protecting life? Not according to Ron Paul. If a right is not specifically enumerated in the Constitution, then the federal government has no role in securing that right–even if it is a so called ”God given unalienable right”.

Ron Paul’s position on abortion at the state level further underscores the fact that he doesn’t understand the concept of unalienable rights. Paul rests all of his pro-life reputation on the fact that he favors outlawing abortion at the state level. But, he makes it perfectly clear that he believes individual states have the constitutional right to legalize abortion.

This is the same argument that was used by slavery defenders in the 1800′s:  states, under the 10th amendment, had broad leeway; and could restrict individual rights in a way the the federal government could not. In both cases, they missed the fact that these rights (the right to freedom and the right to life) are God given, unalienable rights.

Since God established these unalienable rights, no entity lower than God has the authority to separate a person from his rights. To argue otherwise, is to argue that the entire concept of God given, unalienable rights is invalid. Yet, that is exactly what Ron Paul argues: that a state has the authority to separate a person from their rights (in this case, the right to life).

The only conclusion you can come to is that Ron Paul doesn’t recognize the concept of God given, unalienable rights; or that the purpose of government (at every level–federal, state, and local) is to secure those unalienable rights.

God given, unalienable rights–this is the fundamental concept our nation was founded upon. Without this concept, our individual rights are just words written down on a piece of paper; words written by men that can be erased by men.

This is why Ron Paul’s understanding of the Constitution is flawed. He doesn’t grasp the concept of God given, unalienable rights our nation was founded upon, and thus doesn’t grasp why our governments (at every level) were established to begin with.

 

 

 

 

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  • expanding_man

    Our rights come from the Constitution. They do not stem from whatever religious beliefs a particular group of Americans hold at a particular time in our nation’s history. As you know, the reference to “life liberty and the pursuit of happiness” is contained in the Declaration of Independence. To be clear, such document has no force of law in the US. Its purpose was to declare our independence from England and not to set out the rules for how the those living in the colonies would be governed.

    Your diary demonstrates a lack of understanding on how we are governed. It appears you believe that the Declaration of Independence has a legal force and effect. Know the difference between how our legal system actually works and how you would like it to work before you try to argue against abortion. Start by reading the Roe v. Wade arguments and decisions.

  • http://theconservativehand.com Brookhaven

    Our Constitution wasn’t written in a vacuum, nor can you interpret it in a vacuum. The Declaration of Indepedence lays out the philisophical underpinnings of the American Revolution and resultant government.

    One of those concepts was the idea of God given, unalienable rights.

    The founders went out of their way not to recognize a specific religion. But, they made it abundently clear that our rights came from an authority HIGHER than any government.

    You can call that authority the God of the Bible or some generic diety (as Jefferson apparently believed), but it is an authority above any man made government. That is the concept the framers had in mind when they wrote the Constitution. They wrote the Constitution to guarantee and protect what they saw as pre-existing rights, not to create new rights out of thin air.

    To argue that our rights come from the Constitution–a piece of paper written by a group of men–is to argue that there is really no such thing as right at all. It’s to argue, as Obama and the left does, that rights are fluid and situational, and that they can change with the times (the old “living constitution” argument).

  • R. Clayton Strang

    “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”
    -the Declaration of Independence

    Mankind cannot grant rights, all they can do is work to secure rights or work to infringe upon them. Our Founders understood this to be true. It is the very foundation of our Constitutional Republic. If this is not true, then everything that our Founders fought for was a lie, and our Constitution and our Republic are meaningless.

    If governements are the ultimate grantor of rights, then rights can be added or taken away at the whim of the ruling class.

  • expanding_man

    It’s fine to say that the Constitution was influenced by the Declaration of Indepence, our founders, etc. That’s clearly the case. However, when courts look to what rights we have, They look first to the Constitution. They don’t look to the Declaration of Independence.

    The proper argument against abortion is that a fetus is a “person” within the meaning of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. The Supreme Court has failed to rule that that is the case.

    A proper potential way to deal with this fact is to pass a Federal law saying that a fetus is a “person” and should have the protections afforded to a person in the 14th Amendment.

    Again, there’s a difference between how the law really works and how you want it to work.

  • superpatriot

    Won’t be the GOP nominee.

    Let’s hope he loves our country and the party enough to not run 3rd party and give Obama another term.

  • Dave_A

    Is more evident in his views on money and war, than on his positon WRT abortion….

    ‘Roe is bad law, let the states decide’ is now the common ‘neutral’ answer on the subject….

    Where Paul really steps in it, is the following 2 claims:

    1) The Constitution requires the US to use gold or silver for money.

    2) The Constitution requires that Congress pass a resolution containing the words ‘declaration of war’ before the US can deploy troops into combat.

    NEITHER of these things are in any way factual, when you read the Constitution….

    1) The Constitution does not specify what sort of material money may be ‘coined’ from, nor does it contain any exemption to Art 6 allowing (or requiring) states to reject federal non gold/silver legal tender. Gold is only mentioned in Art 1 Sec 10, and only as an exception to the preceding ‘no state money’ rule.

    2) There is no language in the Constitution conditioning the President’s war powers on the issuance of a declaration of war, or requiring that the US only fight declared wars. The Declaration of War power is contained in the same provision as the power to ‘issue Letters of Marque and Reprisal’ and like that power, merely specifies that if a Declaration of War (or Letter of Marque) is desired, Congress must issue it. There is NO constitutional provision requiring that wars be declared.

    Yet the Paul folks will cling to both of these as if they are actually in the Constitution.

  • deringer

    It’s not a case of whether the founders believed there existed God given rights or not (they, with the possible exception of Jefferson, undoubtedly did) it’s that they filtered those Holy rights through a secular lens.

    No government on this planet will ever be capable of meting the justice of the divine, and it would be blasphemous, not to mention arrogant, to say otherwise. The intent of the founding fathers was, having recognised the rights themselves, to create a secular government that respected and did not breach them. Thus the document and the rights it holds are secular, but exist in seamless parallel with God-given ones.