Romney rewriting free speech: Ron Paul Declines a Speaking Spot at GOP Convention After Romney Demands to Review Remarks

Persistent invocation of States' Rights led to the Civil War. The weaker union failed, as did the confederation before it. Can some things be dolled out to the whims of the state? Certainly. Can nearly everything? In my mind, certainly not. The writers of the Constitution did not mean that document to be the only piece of federal legislation ever. They included a legislative branch for a reason.

No offense, but I honestly have no idea what you mean by the "gist of the Constitution" as regards what I wrote. The Constitution makes no mention of capitalism or anything like it, so whatever "gist" the Constitution has does not include anything about the free market.

I don't think I put a "spin" on anything really. I said I would argue it's the case that local governments are more susceptible to corporate corruption. I understand Mr. Paul's arguments for putting policy closer to the voting public. I wish that I believed it would work. Instead, what I think would happen is that sophisticated global corporate entities would overwhelm naive local governments. Sophisticated corporations have to be regulated by sophisticated agencies. We should fight the corruption, not the regulation.

Forgive me if I misrepresented Mr. Paul as wanting to dismantle all government. I do not think he is an anarchist. Under the Plan to Restore America, he does propose completely eliminating 5 departments along with several other federal agencies. Personally, I think many of the cuts he proposes would be disastrous. He would prefer that many of these functions be privatized. I am certain there is not enough support at this point to validate his claims that such privatization would be viable, much less beneficial.

Honestly, I am more than willing to listen to specifics. I am not inherently against everything Mr. Paul has to say. I don't, however, think it's necessary to debate his stringent ideology. I really do understand the dangers of large government, but you can't lop off someone's head because they have a brain tumor. There are more dangers for society than "too much" government, and none of those are remotely at our behest. It is a balancing act, and one in which we must partake.

Never mind the "gist" comment. I see now you meant the last sentence, not the whole paragraph.

From what I see, "assertion without basis" is all that you are willing to offer (although that is not what I would call "spin" unless it's presented as fact). You are making blanket generalizations and unsupported (if not unsupportable) ideological claims. "Do not confuse size with sophistication"... makes a great t-shirt, but I'm not confusing anything. Local governments have less available resources (man-power, technology, etc.) than state governments, which in turn have less than federal. It's simple logistics.

What departments are we better off without exactly? I'm not being sarcastic. Interior? Were we really better off in the 1840s? Should we really sell off all the national parks to private industry? Private property rights aren't going to stop companies from strip mining anything. Private property rights aren't going to prevent the extinction or overhunting of wildlife. Education? Hell, if anything they should have more oversight. The Texas BOE shouldn't be allowed to rewrite history books because they don't like those crazy Hispanic names. Education isn't merely a local concern. In North Carolina, we would likely have mandatory Bible class in a matter of hours after the reigns were handed to our state legislature (remember, separation of church and state is a tradition, it's not in the Constitution, and the first amendment says freedom OF religion, not freedom FROM religion).

I'm sure we can agree on something the Constitution does allow, though. There is a Supreme Court, and if anything our administrators and legislators have come up with is actually unconstitutional you can put in front of them to mull over.

My advice to you is to quit with the self-righteousness. Ron Paul doesn't have all the answers. The Constitution doesn't have all the answers. Things are not "that simple" as you are wont to believe. Quit worrying about what looks good on paper, and worry about what can actually be accomplished, what we can really solve. I'd love to trim the bureaucracy and increase efficiency. I'd love to cut out corruption wherever possible. I'm all for talking about specific things that can be done, specific policies that should be edited or repealed or introduced. Starting over from the beginning is just not a possibility.