I have a confession, I'm in love with a Republican

Well, a Libertarian, but that's just extreme Republicanism anyways. The one I am currently in love with would of course be the premier libertarian on the scene today. Ron Paul.

Watching the Republican debate the other night, I was struck by how on the ball and committed to the real problems facing the US today this man is, and how doggedly he has tried to get his voice into this debate.

While Mitt Romney and John McCain were squabbling over the context of Romney using the term 'timetable', and what that term would mean, Paul interjected himself into the debate, with real ideas not about whether to withdraw from Iraq or not, but that they shouldn't have gone in the first place, that they should be debating whether the US should be interventionists or isolationists, the economy, healthcare, education, tax reduction and y'know, things that matter to the regular, everyday, middle class voter. Y'know, the same ones that will make up 40-50% of the electorate?

Now while I'm not a libertarian, and far from it actually, I always love seeing someone so committed to their cause state their argument so plainly and rationally in the face of pettiness. I don't think any of the Republican nominees would be the right choice, but out of all of them, I think Ron Paul would probably do the best job. He wouldn't re-write the US Constitution to include more religious references (Huckabee), double the size of Guantanamo Bay (Romney), or keep the US in Iraq for a “hundred years” (McCain).

He would stop the US from being the world police, he would stop stomping all over 90% of the country to benefit the top 10%, and he would make things a lot more workable for the majority of Americans.

He would also do plenty of things I'm not in favor of, such as cutting taxes. There wouldn't be supportive government programs such as universal healthcare, which should be a pillar of democratic society, as a representative government is in place to benefit the citizens, or Social Security. Education would likely become less subsidized, instead of more-so, as is needed.

Libertarians put the burden on the individual to provide for themselves in a free and open market, but that market simply isn't there, as workers are not valued as prized and important components, but numbers to generate profits. I'm not going to get into a whole diatribe about corporations and the working person, but all I will say is without a fundamental overhaul of the way the US economy is structured, which is towards the rich, everyone from the middle-class down will not have the resources to make these kinds of free and open choices that they need to survive, such as medical insurance, money for post-secondary education, and retirement security. This is the reason the US economy is in a downturn. The Bush administration has put too much emphasis on the individual to secure their own futures, without giving them the ability to have the resources to do so.

If Ron Paul gets elected (fat chance, I know) he would likely bring about the kind of change necessary to make a Libertarian-style system work, but it would be a long, tough road, and I'm not sure the US electorate has the stomach to weather that kind of storm and let the government that set them on that road stay in power. It’s always the short-term fix that wins elections, not sound, long-term policies that will bear fruit after a long slogging.

Libertarianism, and Ron Paul by extension, are long slogs, and while it possibly could turn out for the better, and Ron Paul is a strong and determined man who I have a lot of respect for, people don't have the stomach for it.

Ron, we could have been beautiful, and some place in my political heart, I'll always have a place for you, but for now, I think its best if we go our separate ways...