Ron Paul and Prostitution

Prostitution is evil. It is a system predicated on debasing the human person, it is born of abuse and makes that abuse a way of life. Where it flourishes, drug abuse, crime, suicide, disease and human misery grow.

Like all evils, it hurts those engaged with it the most, but the injury doesn't end with those who engage with it but casts a larger shadow that touches everyone in the community whether it is legal or not.

Over the last several years HBO has been advancing a campaign to "normalize" prostitution through its "reality" TV show The Cathouse - a state regulated legal brothel in Nevada. The reality of Nevada's legalized prostitution and of the effects of legalized prostitution in general are well documented.

Now the owner of the Cathouse has publicly endorsed Ron Paul and is encouraging "johns" to make a donation every time they pay for sex acts. This endorsement was arranged and created by a member of the MSM, Tucker Carlson - he called up the pimp and manufactured the news story.

In the Main Stream Media's general blackout of the Ron Paul campaign, this particular story has been picked up all over the place (Google news has 99 news hits for this story).

The story is an attempt to smear Ron Paul and his supporters.

But the fact is that Ron Paul supports the decriminalization of prostitution at the Federal level. His We the People Act would remove this issue from Federal and Supreme Court jurisdiction along with a host of other socially difficult issues in accord with the 10th Amendment - The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. His legislation would make it solely a States issue an issue for the people to decide.

As Catholics, we recognize that the civil law has its foundation in morality. There is no law that does not have a moral dimension because it governs human action which is inherently laden with moral weight - the only question is whether the law is moral or immoral. This is why the Catholic Church has been an advocate for the abolition of chattel slavery for hundreds of years, it is why Holy Mother Church speaks out for the defense and respect for human life.

As such to legalize prostitution is to legalize the violation of basic human dignity.

But does Ron Paul want to legalize prostitution?

No.

He wants the States to deal with this question not the Federal Government. He is not advocating the national legalization of prostitution (something that CFRP could not support), but rather the removal of this subject matter from the Federal Court system to empower the States to deal with it.

Is this something that Catholics can support?

Yes, based on the principle of subsidiarity and prudential judgement we know that any social ill is best addressed at the most local level. We also know that when an issue is absorbed by a higher level of authority, the local level tends to become apathetic and passive because "it is no longer my problem." Compassionate liberals who vote for big government programs to solve social problems don't volunteer or give nearly as much money to charitable organizations as small government conservatives. This is because subsidiarity matters.

We also know that when the government funds a program to solve a social problem (be that in law enforcement or social welfare), that problem grows and expands and so too does the program's budget. This is because the incentives are in the wrong place. The incentive for government is to expand its power, its budget and its program, so the incentive is to expand the social problem it is addressing, not eliminate it. Compare that to the kind of local private charities who actually make a difference and have an incentive to end a difficult social problem.

For example, Emmaus Ministries walks the streets of Chicago and Houston every night to help males prostitutes get off the streets. I would rather they have my money rather than the Federal Government to help solve the problem of male prostitution. But they are struggling to keep their doors open because their donations are down due to the state of the economy. Send them a donation to keep their doors open.

At the state level prostitution should be illegal. I think that Dr. Paul might disagree stating that the government can't make you a moral person. I would agree with that idea, but remind him that Law has a major impact on forming culture because of its foundation in morality. Any law that violates the natural law is not a law at all - Martin Luther King knew this and so too did our Founding Fathers.

Ron Paul doesn't condone prostitution, he knows its effects on people and communities, but he doesn't think the Federal Government should be the one to address it, and he may even think that the States should decriminalize it too.

This is where libertarians part ways with Catholics and traditional conservatives. We recognize that the law has an intrinsic foundation in morality and the state has a duty to promote the common good, libertarians have a more reductive understanding of the law as there to preserve liberty.

What it comes down to is two different conceptions of the idea of liberty. But that is for another post.

Suffice to say that Ron Paul is running for President, and his policy on this matter is focused at the federal level. It is a matter of debate and prudential policy as to whether the federal government or local government and local voluntary associations should address this issue.

But know that as a Christian Ron Paul does not condone prostitution, he would rather have families, churches, and voluntary associations deal with this issue rather than the government.

Open Letter to Catholics

In support of Ron Paul.

In the tradition of Walter Block’s Open Letter to the Jewish Community in Behalf of Ron Paul and Laurence Vance’s Open Letter to the Protestant Community in Behalf of Ron Paul, I’d like to say a few words to my fellow Catholics.

Never in my life have I felt as strongly about a presidential candidate – or about any politician, for that matter – as I do about Dr. Ron Paul, Republican congressman from Texas. I’ve gone from being someone so disgusted with politics that I can’t bear to read about it to being a political junkie, avidly following the activities and successes of this great man.

As an American historian, I am not aware of any congressman in American history whose voting record is so stellar, and so consistently in accord with the Constitution.

Beyond that, Ron Paul is not a panderer. He’ll speak to an interest group and tell them to their faces that he has opposed and will continue to oppose funding their pet projects. Lobbyists know they’re wasting their money if they try to wine and dine him. He recently spoke before the national convention of an organization aimed at protecting the interests of a particular ethnic group, and began by saying: "Somebody asked me whether I had a special speech for your group, and I said, no, it’s the same speech I give everywhere."

Already by 1981, Ron Paul had earned the highest rating ever given by the National Taxpayers Union, received the highest rating from the Council for a Competitive Economy, and won the Liberty Award from the American Economic Council for being "America’s outstanding defender of economic and personal freedom."

Dr. Paul, who entered Congress in 1976 and returned to his medical practice in 1984, picked up where he left off when he returned to Congress in the 1996 election. I do not expect to see his like again.

He is also a good and decent man, who really is what he appears to be when you hear him speak. As a physician at an inner-city hospital, Ron Paul provided medical care to anyone who needed it, regardless of ability to pay. He never accepted money from Medicare or Medicaid, preferring to provide free care instead. That’s what people in a free society are supposed to do: be responsible for themselves, and then lend their assistance to those who are vulnerable and alone.

Ron Paul is a candidate who doesn’t insult his listeners’ intelligence, who answers the questions he is asked, and who doesn’t simply say whatever his audience wants to hear. And unlike other major names in the race, Ron Paul doesn’t have to run away from his record, which reveals an unswerving commitment to peace, freedom, and prosperity that is second to none in all of American history.

Although I would have supported Ron Paul back before I converted to Catholicism, I think Catholics will like what they see when they examine his record. Over at Defend Life, Ron Paul comes out decisively on top in a study of the candidates’ positions on the issues according to the guidelines recently established by the United States bishops. (If anything, I think this study understates Paul’s compatibility with Catholic teaching.)

On education and home schooling, Ron Paul is the clear winner. Fred Thompson, John McCain, and Duncan Hunter all voted for the execrable No Child Left Behind Act, and Governors Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney have both come out in favor of it. Ron Paul – as did the Republican Party itself not so long ago – opposes any federal role in education, which is the responsibility of parents and local communities.

In other words, Ron Paul believes in a little something called subsidiarity, which happens to be a central principle of Catholic social thought. Subsidiarity holds that all social functions should be carried out by the most local unit possible, as opposed to the dehumanizing alternative whereby distant bureaucratic structures are routinely and unthinkingly entrusted with more and more responsibilities for human well-being.

On home schooling, Ron Paul has proposed legislation giving tax credits worth thousands of dollars to reimburse the educational expenses of home-schooling parents, as well as those of parents who send their children to other kinds of schools. What presidential candidate speaks like this?

Parental control of child rearing, especially education, is one of the bulwarks of liberty. No nation can remain free when the state has greater influence over the knowledge and values transmitted to children than the family. By moving to restore the primacy of parents to education, the Family Education Freedom Act will not only improve America’s education, it will restore a parent’s right to choose how best to educate one’s own child, a fundamental freedom that has been eroded by the increase in federal education expenditures and the corresponding decrease in the ability of parents to provide for their children’s education out of their own pockets.

When it comes to abortion, Ron Paul – an obstetrician/gynecologist who has delivered over 4,000 babies – has been a consistent opponent of Roe v. Wade, which he rightly considers unconstitutional. But he has no interest in the failed strategy of the past 35 years whereby we sit and wait for a remedy in the form of good Supreme Court justices. His HR 300 would strip the federal courts of jurisdiction over abortion, as per Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution. That would overturn Roe by a simple congressional majority.

Then we could see who is sincere on the issue, and who is just exploiting it for votes. Few in either party really want to see the abortion status quo overturned, since it means they can’t scare their supporters into sending them as much money anymore.

Upon the Pope’s death in 2005, Ron Paul paid tribute to John Paul’s consistent defense of life. On another occasion, he offered an additional tribute, of the sort few politicians would utter:
To the secularists, this was John Paul II’s unforgivable sin – he placed service to God above service to the state. Most politicians view the state, not God, as the supreme ruler on earth. They simply cannot abide a theology that does not comport with their vision of unlimited state power. This is precisely why both conservatives and liberals savaged John Paul II when his theological pronouncements did not fit their goals. But perhaps their goals simply were not godly.

Speaking of John Paul II, it is important to remember that that pope was a strong opponent of the U.S. government’s attack on Iraq, sending his personal representative, Cardinal Pio Laghi, to Washington shortly before the commencement of hostilities in order to insist to the president that such a war would be unjust. The Pope’s first comments after the war broke out were these: "When war, as in these days in Iraq, threatens the fate of humanity, it is ever more urgent to proclaim, with a strong and decisive voice, that only peace is the road to follow to construct a more just and united society."

Before his election as Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was asked if a U.S. government attack on Iraq would be just. "Certainly not," came the reply. He predicted that "the damage would be greater than the values one wishes to save."

After the war ended, Ratzinger said: "It was right to resist the war and its threats of destruction…. It should never be the responsibility of just one nation to make decisions for the world." "There were not sufficient reasons to unleash a war against Iraq," he elsewhere observed. "To say nothing of the fact that, given the new weapons that make possible destructions that go beyond the combatant groups, today we should be asking ourselves if it is still licit to admit the very existence of a ‘just war.’"

Hundreds of thousands lost their lives in this obviously avoidable war, a war that was based on falsehoods that we would have laughed at if they’d been uttered by Leonid Brezhnev. But since they came from the White House we cheer as for a football team, and duck the appalling material and moral consequences. A country that (by regional standards) once had an excellent health care system, opportunities for women, liberal gun and alcohol laws, and – yes – lots of immigrants, was turned into a disease-ridden basket case, filled with dead, wounded, and malnourished children, for no good reason.

That’s just wrong, and it isn’t "liberal" to say so.

Likewise, Ratzinger/Benedict is not a "liberal" for opposing the war. He is a moral conservative, but a man whose conservatism is more mature than the sloganeering jingoism of so much of what passes for conservatism in today’s America. Ron Paul is an equally sober and serious statesman, and for that reason was one of very few Republicans with the courage and the foresight to oppose this economic and moral fiasco from the very start.

It is especially satisfying to learn that in the second quarter of 2007, Ron Paul received more donations from active duty and retired military personnel than any other Republican candidate. By the third quarter, he was receiving more than any other presidential candidate, Democrat or Republican. Want to support the troops? Then support Ron Paul.

My main argument to you, though, is not a specifically Catholic one. It’s one that should resonate with anybody who values honesty, integrity, and decency. Ron Paul is a good man who believes in justice and the Constitution, and who cannot be bought. His ten terms in Congress have proven that again and again.

And that is why the media fears him. Unlike the rest of them, Ron Paul is unowned.
Now every establishment hack out there wants you to vote for one of the business-as-usual candidates. Are you really so happy with the establishment that its endorsement or cajoling means anything to you? If anything, it should make us all the more interested in Ron Paul – the one candidate the establishment fears, since they know their game is up if he should win.
Far from being in the unhappy position of a candidate whose children won’t even speak to him, Ron Paul is fortunate to have family members all over the campaign trail on his behalf. He has been married to the same woman for 50 years, and has been blessed with five children and eighteen grandchildren. There are some family values.

Just think: for once, you don’t have to choose the lesser among evils. You can finally vote for someone. You can not only be happy, but actually honored, to cast your vote for Ron Paul.
But don’t just vote for him. Find out about him, and get out there and spread the word.