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.

Ron Paul is Best Catholic Choice - US Bishops' Faithful Citizenship Guidelines

Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul has been rated the Best Choice for Catholic Voters, based on an independent analysis by The Defend Life blog of Maryland. The analysis used the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' criteria in Faithful Citizenship - its guide for Catholic voters - to rate the various candidate's platforms and has determined that Ron Paul's positions are most compatible with the USCCB standards.

Using a point system that gave greater weight for "non-negotiable" issues such as abortion, embryonic stem-cell research, and gay marriage, the analysis lined up all the candidates to see where they stand on a broad array of issues.

Ron Paul (R) scored highest with a score of 99, with Alan Keyes (R) following with 70, and Mike Huckabee (R) third with 69. Dead last was the purportedly Catholic Rudy Giuliani (R) with -28 and Barack Obama (D) with -15. Hilary Clinton (D) scored a -11 and Fred Thompson (R) scored only a 4.

The Catholic vote in America is critical for the 2008 presidential election. Some have argued that Catholics are statistically invisible as voters, that they divide along the same partisan tribal lines as most Americans.

This is not true.

The last election was won in Ohio due largely to the presence of Catholic voters who significantly voted against John Kerry because of his culture of death platform and his rationally inconsistent statements such as, "I believe life begins at conception, but I can't impose my Catholic beliefs on others as president." Such idiocy was not going to wash over faithful and informed Catholics.

After this election, the Democrats began a deliberate "values voters" offensive to cloak these same culture of death positions in a rhetoric of "faith and values." The Democrats haven't changed their positions, they have just massaged their rhetoric and scheduled more speeches at churches.

The Republicans have shown their true colors as well. Last election was all about values, but then the neo-conservative radicals in the party have such a grip that the party has shrunk and they have given the electorate Rudy - the most terrible candidate on values - because he is a war hawk neo-con who will continue to wage an unjust war.

So the Catholic vote is important. But more importantly, Catholic voting principles are what matter. These principles are immutable and the best source for learning about them is the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church.

A number of faithful Catholics (and not so faithful Catholics) have published Voter's Guides to help inform the Catholic population as to the Catholic framework for choosing a candidate. In that same spirit, the United State Conference of Catholic Bishops wrote "Faithful Citizenship." As a document of the USCCB, Faithful Citizenship does not have magisterial status along the same lines as a document from the Holy Father, or one of the Congregations in the Curia, or even one from a bishop writing to his flock.

Often bishop conference documents are criticised for being unhelpful, bland and inconclusive. A bishop's conference does not have ecclesial status and the process of creating a collective document results in undermining the authority that the Church truly has. Even Cardinal Ratzinger has noted that the bishops' conference in Germany during the rise of the Nazis had the effect of watering down and muting the strength of the church's opposing voice to this evil.

So in making reference to the Faithful Citizenship document, it is done with a hefty grain of salt and light because true to form the document tends to lack both.

The Defend Life analysis can be read in detail here:

http://defendlife.blogspot.com/2007/11/evaluation-of-presidential-candidates.html

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.

Ron Paul Would Rescue Catholic Charities

An interesting insight was posted by "tz" in the comments box about the effect Ron Paul's policies would have on Catholic Charities.

Here is his comment:

There is no contradiction in wanting Abortion banned across the nation - one state at a time. But the most important thing is that Catholic Charities can cease losing their souls for tax-deductibility. No IRS, no compromise such as not being able to express an opinion between a cross-dressing pro-abort and a man of honor who keeps his promises and is pro-life, but also properly understands subsidiarity. Ah, the martyrs of old, who would not drop the pinch of incense and mumble words and suffer torture and death. When you sell your soul, do you have to declare the proceeds on your 1040?

"tz" makes a very important point here.

Over the years, Catholic Charities have had their wonderful reputation slide because it has been pressured to conform to the world on issues such as gay adoption and in some cases have chosen to cease offering services rather than risk losing its tax status. The fact of the matter is that Catholic Charities is not prepared to fight a legal battle and between taking a stand and retreating from the works of mercy, they are forced into retreat (or worse, to conform themselves).

The state has even declared that Catholic Charities is not Catholic and so must pay for contraception.

This is part of a very sophisticated attack on the Catholic Church that seeks to remove the Church from its mission to spread the Gospel and love the needy.

What is the instrument of torture that will remove the greatest force of love and charity in our society? The IRS and the tax code.

Ron Paul's policies would seek to eliminate the IRS and that would liberate (there is that word Liberty again) Catholic Charities to continue its wonderful work unfettered by the state's totalitarian ideology of sterilization, homosexualization and secularity.

This is what the Founding Fathers meant when they spoke of Liberty. They weren't advocating a freedom were everyone can do what they like, that is not Liberty, but rather license, and total licence leads to licentiousness and spiritual, psychological and physical bondage. No, they were advocating the most fundamental Liberty - Religious Liberty - the freedom to pursue virtue, express faith, hope and love in a public and communal way, and to give thanks to God for His blessings, unrestrained by a State ideology. The Founding Fathers wanted a society based on the Liberty that is the fruit of the moral life, because a nation of virtuous men and women would ensure the survival of our country. Whereas a nation of licentious men and women would slide into a tyrannical state.

Tyranny is not on our door step of our nation, it is in the front hall!

Ron Paul's policies on taxation and the elimination of the IRS would abolish this modern day sophisticated structure of injustice, torture and coercion.

It is just one more reason why every Catholic should support Ron Paul.

Thank you "tz" for your insight and for reading CFRP.

Go Ron Paul!

Blogger: Paul Best Choice for Catholics

At the Defend Life blog, blogger Joe Healy finds Ron Paul the best presidential candidate in light of the U.S. bishops' criteria.

CFRP Welcomes Readers of SpiritDaily.com

Today one of CFRP's blog entries was picked up by Spirit Daily.

Thank you Spirit Daily and welcome to Spirit Daily readers!

Why Every Catholic Should Vote for Ron Paul

Every Catholic should be engaged in politics because every Catholic has a duty to seek and promote the Common Good. But what is the Common Good? The catechism tells us:

By common good is to be understood "the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily." The common good concerns the life of all. It calls for prudence from each, and even more from those who exercise the office of authority. It consists of three essential elements:

So the question you all should be asking yourself is, "What are the social conditions that allow everyone to flourish as persons and groups in our society most easily?"

To answer this question we have to know what the three essential elements that can not be abridged in our search for a flourishing society:

1. Respect for the Person - Here we are talking about the most fundamental respect for the inalienable rights of the person - The Right to Life, The Right to Liberty (properly understood), and the Right to the Free Exercise of Religion. (CC 1907) Society will decay and eventually collapse when any of these fundamental aspects of the person are violated.

2. Social Well Being & Development - The epitome of everyone's social duty is to seek the development of all peoples in society. (CC 1908) Does this mean that we should support a big welfare state that supplies all of our food, clothing, health, work, education and culture, etc.? No. Becasue this violates the principle of subsidiarity and cultivates dependencies and undermines the family. The state should not replace the family and voluntary associations like the Church and the local homeless shelter. It means that you and I, our families and our local churchs and voluntary associations should seek to ensure that no one in our community suffers due to a deficit of well being or can not develop because of some structural injustice in society (like slavery) or other impediment to flourishing.

3. Peace - this is not the peace of the hippies or of some wooly pacifist who wouldn't even fight to defend the innocent, nor is it the peace that we see in totalitarian societies where fear keeps everyone in line. Rather this peace is deep because it is the fruit of a society that respects persons and seeks development as part of a just and stable society. It implies a morally acceptable means of security and the right to personal and collective defense. (CC 1909) In other words, the right to bear arms, and a strong (moral) national defense that is governed by the Doctrine of Just War.

There is a lot more that can be said about this, but lets look at Ron Paul for a moment as he is on these issues:

1. Respect for Persons - Ron Paul's understanding of this issue is profound and deeply informed. He understands the philosophic relationship between the fundamental right to life and the liberty our founders recognized in the Constitution. Liberty is impossible without absolutely protecting the right to life from conception to natural death. He has said that "Abortion is the ultimate State Tyranny" because the state has no basis to deny someone of this most fundamental right. Ron Paul is against embronic destructive research (however he has talked about situations where the principle of double effect results in the unintended destruction of the life of the child). And perhaps the only issue that Ron Paul has changed his position on over the years is the question of the Death Penalty, previously he was in favor of it, but he is now against it. I don't know of another politician whose position is more in harmony with the philosophic position of the Church.

2. Social Well Being & Development - Ron Paul is an advocate of small government; stated another way, he is an advocate of personal responsibility and engagement with issues at the local level where you and your neighbors can make a difference. When the State tries to solve a social problem, the problem will grow because by its nature, the State is about power, and not compassion. Power always seeks to take and expand; compassion seeks to give away and sacrifice for others. So State programs tend to grow the problem and grow their budgets - this means they will take more money away from you and I. This is why the Church teaches about subsidiarity and the debilitatiing effects of a welfare state on the family.

Ron Paul is a constant advocate of reducing the size of government and reducing the tax burden on the American family. Today the tax payer has to work for close to 6 months to pay government before he can start working for the well being and development of his own family. In addition, Ron Paul is the only candidate talking about the immoral and unjust inflation tax that is imposed by our Federal Reserve system and the policy of borrowing and then debasing the currency. This policy is perhaps the greatest structural injustice against the poor and middle class in existence today. He wants to do away with our the unconstitutional currency, and eliminate the 16th Amendment and the federal income tax.

Ron Paul understands that the path to human flourishing is to get government off our backs, restore an ethic of personal responsibility to the people and let them keep the fruit of their labor by restoring a sound currency and taking away an income tax.

The American people are the most generous in the world. But how can we have time and money to give to charity or volunteer when we have such excessive taxation and the money we work hard to make is routinely debased as a matter of federal reserve policy? When American families have the conditions for their freedom and their prosperity restored and secured, they pour themselves out for others unlike any other time in history and we will see human well being spread by our good example.

3. Peace - Ron Paul is the only candidate calling for the abandonment of the "premptive war doctrine" and a return to Christian Just War principles. He is the only candidate calling for an immediate end to the war in Iraq. He is a strong supporter of the 2nd Amendment. And a strong critic of the military industrial complex (our society is at risk when large powerful companies have direct and immediate incentives to go to war). Ron Paul is also a strong critic of the erosion of our civil liberties that have happened in the name of "domestic security."

No other candidate running, or in recent memory encompasses the principles of Catholic Social Teaching and the necessary conditions for the Common Good than Ron Paul.

Video: Ron Paul for John Paul

Check it out!

Ron Paul & The Primacy of Life

Ron Paul eloquently defends his position on the life issues.

Two interesting points here.

1. One of the interviewers aggressively attacks Ron Paul with the false dilemma of "Who are you going to put in jail, the woman seeking an abortion or her doctor!" Ron Paul answers with humility and a strong dose of reality. He is a passionate defender of life. This line of questioning reveals just how impoverished the thinking is on the pro-abortion advocacy side of things.

2. He says that the only way that embryonic research might be morally acceptable is when you have an ectopic pregnancy that threatens the life of the mother. Invoking the natural law principle of double effect, the action that seeks to save the mother's life results (in an unwanted fashion) with the death of the child. In this limited scope, Ron Paul suggests that it might be morally acceptable for that embryo to be reserved for research purposes.

This exchange shows how deeply informed Ron Paul is with natural law arguments on the life issue. But more so, how deeply he holds them.

Catholic Convert Kudlow Gives Ron Paul a Fair Shake

Is the Main Stream Media really asking Ron Paul about how to fix our monetary system?

Yes, and they are discussing Hayek's The Road to Serfdom too!

This really is revolutionary!

"Thou Shalt Not Steal"

Ron Paul does a masterful job of admonishing Ben Bernanke on the central bank's complicity in the current policy of confiscatory inflation.

The Manichean Presidency

David Gordon of the Mises Institute writes an excellent review of Glen Greenwald's new book, A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. EvilDestroyed the Bush Presidency Mentality . Here is a money quote from the book:

The term Manichean refers in its most literal sense to a religion founded in the third century by the Persian prophet Manes … it central precept was that the entire world could be cleanly divided into two opposing spheres — God and Satan in the world of the eternal, and a corresponding battle of Good and Evil playing out on earth … the historical fate of the Manichees is of far less interest than is contemporary reliance on their religion's central moral tenets. In the overwhelming majority of President Bush's significant speeches and interviews throughout his political career — but particularly since the 9/11 attacks — he evinces a dualistic worldview lodged at the core of his belief system. (p. 46)

"The Bush administration views other countries as so dominated by evil that they cannot be expected to act rationally."

Here's praying for a foreign policy which looks at all other nations with the eyes of the Father, a good Creation, a rational Creation, capable of Redemption. Ron Paul's foreign policy would be based on a realistic view of our own faults and a realistic respect for the dignity of other peoples in their affairs. A non-interventionist foreign policy invokes the Golden Rule as its central principle, one which, if we have Faith, will serve this nation and the world well.

Dr. Paul defending John Paul II

Here's a great quote of Ron Paul defending John Paul the Great from the secular statists.

"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."

In other words, as St. Peter said, "We must obey God rather than men." -Acts 5:29

The Meaning of November 5th

The organizers of the 5th of November initiative have not formally responded to CFRP's post nor to my e-mail asking for clarification as to the meaning of November 5th.

However, they have posted a speech by Ron Paul about patriotism, the resistance to oppressive state power and non-violence means. It seems that this new addition to the website is a response to the valid criticism raised by CFRP and others about the meaning of November 5th as being anti-Catholic/Christian, and supportive of terrorism as a means of resisting an oppressive state .



By posting this video, the organizers, I think, are clarifying the spirit with which they are invoking the 5th of November. This is very welcome. It is a spirit that CFRP can agree with and support.

The following YouTube video was posted to the combox discussion of CFRP's earlier post about the meaning of the 5th of November from a Catholic perspective.



CFRP supports the effort to raise a fantastic money bomb for Ron Paul's campaign, but does not support the kind of resistance used by Guy Fawkes. In a sense, the "bomb" being dropped today on the government is a money bomb, and Ron Paul's statement makes clear that planting bombs (a la Fawkes) is to be rejected. Lets hope that if the organizers of this campaign get interviewed by the MSM that they too make that clear.


Lets hope that the campaign is a success and the message of the day is Ron Paul's message of Patriotism.

Donate here (as much as you can) to be part of history.

"The Sometimes Painful Realities of American Life"

Here is a profound quote enunciated by Morgan Freeman in a Hollywood production on the Declaration of Independence:

The real glory of the Declaration of Independence has been our nation's epic struggle throughout history to close the gap between the ideals of this remarkable document and the sometimes painful realities of American life.

These painful realities were present in the beginning with slavery and later with racism. Today the gap manifests itself most overtly with the modern preventive war doctrines, but there is an even more profound painful reality that is all too obvious that it is often ignored, abortion. A whole generation of Americans have been eliminated with the judicial backing and financial support of the modern American state. While African Americans now largely enjoy the equal protection of the law, the same cannot be said for their unborn or any unborn in America. And while Thomas Jefferson's reputation suffers from his self-acknowledged hypocrisy to slavery, Martin Luther King's hypocrisy to the life of the unborn should be recognized as well. While there is no evidence King overtly supported abortion, he was a recipient of he Sanger Award by Planned Parenthood for his support of its "family planning" initiatives. Both Jefferson and King, two of America's greatest champions of natural rights and equality, personify the beautiful, yet sometimes tragic struggle that is America.

The gap which desperately needs to be closed today respects the life of the unborn of which I believe Ron Paul is a champion. Paul reminds us of the obvious, without life, there is no liberty. Further, as the great Phoenix Bishop Thomas Olmstead exhorts us, we must notice the text of the Declaration stating that the endowed inalienable rights come to us upon our creation. We are created equal in rights by "the Lord the Giver of Life", not born equal in rights. Of course, one need not be Catholics to know when and how human creation occurs. Thus, the unborn are created equal as enunciated in our founding charter. Paul continually seeks to statutorily overrule Roe v. Wade, Griswold v. Connecticut, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, and all their ilk with the "We the People Act." While he would remand the abortion question back to the states, it is an incremental strategy which will result in real restrictions on abortion. Further, I think he would do what he could to eliminate abortion in areas under Federal jurisdiction, like the District of Colombia.

Finally, under a Paul administration, I think a good strategy for cutting government spending would be to place a hierarchy among programs and their effect on life. After dealing with the most direct and immediate unjust Federal action, the Iraq war, at the top of the chop block should be Federal abortion and family planning financing during a Paul versus Congress budget battle. All other Federal budget cuts should be subordinate. I think he should bring the government to a shut-down over the issue, particularly since it is the extremely painful reality of this American age.

Here is the Morgan Freeman video on the Declaration of Independence: