Local control - abortion

For many of the powers Paul supports removing from the federal government, he supports increased power at the state and local level. Education, for example, has traditionally been both funded by locally leveled taxes, and controlled by local boards elected largely by people involved with children who go to school in the area. The federal Department of Education has increasingly offered more federal money to schools - while imposing more bureaucracy on them. Such as the couterproductive No Child Left Behind Act. While federal money somewhat helps poor states at the expense of rich states (that kinda sounds good), I believe the value lost by reducing local control is too much. I support the Paul's position that the federal Department of Education should be dismantled, which would require increased educational activity at the state and local levels of governments.

A hot-button issue to which Paul applies this principle of local control is abortion. The famous court case Roe v. Wade first involved the federal government in abortion - prior to that, only states had passed laws on the procedure (or not - in a few states, abortion has never been addressed by state law (making it by default legal) for the entire history of the United States). The current position of most groups that support the continuing legality of abortion (such as Planned Parenthood) is to attempt to maintain a Supreme Court that will uphold the Roe v. Wade and related decisions. The current position of most groups that oppose the legality of abortion is to amend the United States Constitution to allow the federal government to ban all abortions (or with very limited exceptions such as life of the woman and rapes that were reported to the police within a certain time of the rape), throughout the country.

But most Americans do not entirely subscribe to either of these. Most Americans (as far as I can tell reading the polls) believe early abortions are undesirable but should be available, while late abortions should be prevented in all but the most extreme cases. Exactly where the dividing line between early and late abortions falls, and in what cases late abortion should be allowed are highly controversial. But almost never debated, because the Supreme Court has hamstrung state's ability to act on these issues:

• Only the vague characteristic 'viability' can be used to determine when abortion can be severely restricted or banned, and the physician performing the abortion has to be the one determining whether the fetus is viable or not.
• Cut-off dates are not allowed - not 20 weeks, not 27 weeks, not 35 weeks. Only the physician's (the one performing the abortion) personal judgment of viability.
• Requiring the opinion of a second physician on viability has been forbidden by the Supreme Court. This despite the fact that all abortions done for serious health reasons of the mother or fetus invariably have involved multiple doctors to confirm the diagnosis. Only elective abortions involve only one physician.

Abortion has become one of the most divisive issues in America. I believe this is largely because the federal government becoming involved in the issue has made it an all-or-nothing proposition. Ron Paul supports overturning Roe v. Wade - and then preventing the federal government from any further involvement in the issue (he is the only candidate from either party who holds this position.) Let the state legislatures act out the will of their constituents. Let the discussion of the middle ground on the abortion issue displace the pro-elective-abortion-for-nine-months vs. pro-life-from-fertilization screaming match that has raged in our country for so long. A strong showing of Ron Paul's campaign would, I believe, help start our country on a healing path on this and so many other issues - healing our country desperately needs.

Note, this is my personal take on the effect of Paul's policies. Paul's personal beliefs are staunchly pro-life, and he feels strongly enough about the issue to have written two books on the subject: Challenge to Liberty: Coming to Grips with the Abortion Issue and Abortion and Liberty.

Intelligence gathering

One of the things that really cemented my support for Ron Paul was his stance on intelligence gathering, and how government intelligence activities affect civil liberties. This would not have influenced me four years ago. I live in America, the land of the free. I sometimes disagreed with our leaders on issues of civil liberties in principle, sure. But I never felt the leader's positions on those issues would directly impact large numbers of people. Civil liberties were not a deciding issue for me when voting, and even after Bush's first term I believed Congress would curb his most damaging erosions of the rights outlined in the Constitution.

Damaging erosions, such as wiretapping Americans - without a warrant. The standards for obtaining a warrant are very low - I had a professor who worked in criminal law for a few years and he had never seen a judge refuse to issue a requested warrant. What kind of fishing expeditions are law enforcement officials going on that they can't even put together cases for suspecting a person of wrongdoing?

There are so many other ways the current administration has stolen American freedoms people have written books on the subject. Worse - Congress is unable or unwilling to object to these actions. The past few years have seen me grow more and more scared of my own government.

There are a number of candidates who strongly object to compromising civil liberties in the name of intelligence gathering. But I feel Ron Paul's approach is the best. Other candidates would use government bureaucracy in a way that would generate high-quality intelligence while respecting the rights enumerated in the Constitution. Paul would advocate for Congress to slash government agencies and remove their ability to violate the Constitution for the foreseeable future. Bush's predecessors had no agendas to push the boundaries of the Bill of Rights - how was he able to do so much damage so quickly? Because the bureaucracy was already there.

How to remove this bureaucracy? One at a time. For example, take away the operations wing of the CIA - the wing that has again and again produced blowback that harms American security. Remove its layers of secrecy that allow one man - the President - to lead all our elected officials astray. Turn it back into an intelligence agency that provides information for ALL our leaders - that does not pander to one man, that does not perform damaging operations in foreign nations. And save a bunch of your federal tax dollars - that are currently being spent to make you less safe. Only Paul advocates this, and I believe this is the medicine our nation needs.

A Secure America

All the candidates for president have their plans for making America more secure. One of the first things about Ron Paul that caught my attention was his emphasis on blowback when he explains his foreign policy views. Blowback is the term the CIA uses to describe unintended consequences of our foreign policies. For example:

• The United States armed and gave battle training to Osama bin Laden. The intent of this training of bin Laden (along with many other people) was to send them to fight Soviet Union in Afghanistan. Twenty-three years later, he used this training to mastermind the World Trade Center attacks of 9/11.
• Iran had a democratically elected leader named Mohammed Mosaddeq. The CIA's conducted a military operation and removed him from power. A short-term blowback was the Iran Hostage Crisis, where outrage at the U.S.-installed government was cited as a major motivation for the hostage taking. A longer-term blowback is the complete refusal of Iran to engage with the Western nations on their nuclear program. More broadly, Operation Ajax was one of the first major contributors to an unstable Middle East where the populace hates the United States.
  

These are more major examples of blowback, but they are not the only ones. Ron Paul's message is that spreading democracy at the point of a gun makes America less secure. Our unwelcome military presence in other countries invariably results in unforeseen negative consequences. Long term security can only be achieved through open communication with other governments, and by setting an example other countries will want to emulate.

Hearing about Paul

Ron Paul is described in many news articles as an internet phenomenon. I did not hear about him on the internet, however. I first heard of Paul from my husband - who learned about him through the internet.

Our household that does not subscribe to any print newspaper, and only sometimes watches TV (and not news at that). It is natural that we have gathered more information about Paul the same way we receive almost all of our news - on the internet.

And boy, have we been excited by what we have learned.