Kevin DeGraaf’s Blog

There’s a great deal of “buzz” in the blogosphere about Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas), a Republican presidential contender. (For more information, see his Wikipedia entry and his official campaign website).

As a card-carrying Libertarian, I agree with the vast majority of Ron Paul’s positions. He is opposed to the occupation of Iraq, unbalanced budgets and deficit spending, high taxes, the USA PATRIOT Act, a national ID card system, torture, warrantless surveillance, ceding of sovereignty to the UN, restrictions on free trade, amnesty for illegal aliens, abuses of eminent domain, the mandated Post Office monopoly, unnecessary government agencies (e.g. the IRS, Dept. of Education, Dept. of Energy, DHS, FEMA, ICC), gun-control laws, Social Security, the welfare state, the draft, prohibition of drugs, the curtailing of civil liberties including that of habeus corpus, and unconstitutional governmental “scope-creep” in general.

So far, so good. I find myself cheering “Yes!” (well, figuratively, anyway) to Ron Paul’s opposition to everything I just mentioned. Compared to the mess that the (normal) Republicans and Democrats have made of our country, a Ron Paul presidency would seem to be a breath of fresh air. His decision to remain affiliated with the Republican party, as opposed to the Libertarian party, could be seen as a purely tactical decision, since third-party candidates are basically unelectable under the current system.

But wait — there’s a problem: he’s a fundy religious nutbag whose rantings make Bill O’Reilly sound sane:

The Christmas spirit, marked by a wonderful feeling of goodwill among men, is in danger of being lost in the ongoing war against religion.

Through perverse court decisions and years of cultural indoctrination, the elitist, secular Left has managed to convince many in our nation that religion must be driven from public view. The justification is always that someone, somewhere, might possibly be offended or feel uncomfortable living in the midst of a largely Christian society, so all must yield to the fragile sensibilities of the few. The ultimate goal of the anti-religious elites is to transform America into a completely secular nation, a nation that is legally and culturally biased against Christianity.

[...] The notion of a rigid separation between church and state has no basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writings of our Founding Fathers. On the contrary, our Founders’ political views were strongly informed by their religious beliefs. Certainly the drafters of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, both replete with references to God, would be aghast at the federal government’s hostility to religion. The establishment clause of the First Amendment was simply intended to forbid the creation of an official state church like the Church of England, not to drive religion out of public life.

The Founding Fathers envisioned a robustly Christian yet religiously tolerant America, with churches serving as vital institutions that would eclipse the state in importance. Throughout our nation’s history, churches have done what no government can ever do, namely teach morality and civility. Moral and civil individuals are largely governed by their own sense of right and wrong, and hence have little need for external government. This is the real reason the collectivist Left hates religion: Churches as institutions compete with the state for the people’s allegiance, and many devout people put their faith in God before their faith in the state. Knowing this, the secularists wage an ongoing war against religion, chipping away bit by bit at our nation’s Christian heritage. Christmas itself may soon be a casualty of that war.

Ugh. Tearing down the wall of church-state separation (or pretending it never existed at all), thereby allowing religion to intrude upon people’s lives, is definitely not a libertarian position.

I strongly believe that religion is a delusion. I realize that not all of my readers agree, but any thinking person should be able to grasp the idea that using public property (funds, real estate, etc.) to advance one’s religious beliefs is not only unconstitutional, but arrogant and self-centered.

Furthermore, the statements that the Founding Fathers envisioned a Christian nation and that the Constitution is replete with references to God are so laughably wrong as to be scary. Do your own research, and you will see that the Fathers were, in general, deist, not theist (and certainly not Christian). You will also find a glaring lack of references to God in our Constitution.

More commentary along these lines is available here and here.

Would I vote for Ron Paul? Based on his current poll numbers, the question is largely academic, but at this point, I would, reluctantly, have to say “no”. I can’t, in good conscience, vote for someone who wants to dismantle American religious separation, and the protection it brings, even if his policies are otherwise overwhelmingly appealing.

The designers and programmers who unleashed Microsoft Exchange upon the world should be shot.

That is all.