http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul98.html

http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul100.html

" Pro-life forces have worked for the passage of bills that disregard the federal system, such as the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, the federal cloning ban, and the Child Custody Protection Act. Each of these bills rested on specious constitutional grounds and undermined the federalism our Founders recognized and intended as the greatest protection of our most precious rights.

Each of these bills transfers to the federal government powers constitutionally retained by the states, thus upsetting the separation and balance of powers that federalism was designed to guarantee. To undermine federalism is to indirectly surrender the very principle upon which the protection of our inalienable right to life depends. "

...

"State legislatures have always had proper jurisdiction over issues like abortion and cloning; the pro-life movement should recognize that jurisdiction and not encroach upon it. The alternative is an outright federal ban on abortion, done properly via a constitutional amendment that does no violence to our way of government"

http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul240.html

"Morality is inherent in law, no matter what the secularists might say. But morality is not inherent in politics. As law professor Butler Shaffer explains, politics is about obtaining power over the lives of others through government force. Thus politics is a rejection of the sanctity of life. So it is a mistake to assume that a pro-life culture develops through political persuasion or government power. Respect for human life originates with individuals acting according to their consciences. A pro-life conscience is fostered by religion, family, and ethics, not government. History teaches us that governments overwhelmingly violate the sanctity of human life rather than uphold it.

The notion that an all-powerful, centralized state should provide monolithic solutions to the ethical dilemmas of our times is not only misguided, but also contrary to our Constitution. Remember, federalism was established to allow decentralized, local decision-making by states. Yet modern America seeks a federal solution for every perceived societal ill, ignoring constitutional limits on government. The result is a federal state that increasingly makes all-or-nothing decisions that alienate large segments of the population. "

http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul243.html

Federalism, or having government be local has a great allure. It seems to be common sense, that government would work best when it is closest to the governed.

In Mahatma Gandhi's time, India was mostly rural (it is still mostly rural, 70% or so, even after explosive urbanization). Mahatma Gandhi envisioned India as a confederation of half-a-million villages.

Even so, Dalit leader BR Ambedkar wanted a strong central government as a guarantor of the rights of the so-called lower castes (and he achieved that).

This intuition, that the central government is needed to check the states is borne out from American experience. Federalism did not work well in abolishing slavery or in securing voting rights.

The counter argument might be that the results would be more lasting and with no recidivism if the states abolished slavery, instituted equality, etc., at their own pace. But how many people do we sacrifice to a long wait for justice?

Therefore we might say that while federalism is the Constitutional principle as written, the Civil War and other events essentially constitute an unwritten amendment to how Constitutional federalism is to be interpreted.

IMO, the answer to Ron Paul's strict constitutionalism lies in that direction.

Despite Ron Paul's Sep 26 vote in Congress against Moveon.org, a Ron Paul news website features on Oct 10, this pro-Ron-Paul commercial by Moveon.org.

http://ronpaulnews.net/2007/10/moveonorg-commercial-hails-ron-paul.html

The leadership elite in this country is about as rotten in its grasp of reality as was the leadership of the Soviet Union just prior to Gorbachev. This includes most Republican leadership, most Democratic leadership, the owners and opinion makers in the media, the management of companies (e.g., those who participated in what Atrios calls the Big ShitPile). Somehow freedom has been taken to mean freedom to fly in the face of reality, liberty to fudge with the facts.

The redeeming part of our reality is that the reality-based opposition is not in the Gulag (yet!)

We need at least four more weeks to find out (there have been other six week lulls in the violence in the past). Please see:

http://icasualties.org/oif_a/CasualtyTrends.htm

"Fatality Trends Remain at The Lowest Level Since Summer 2007, Coinciding with the Surge of Operations/Insurgent Retreat,

However Iraqi Fatalities Spiked This Week Up to 180. The Highest Level in Six Weeks, And U.S. Fatalities Continue to Inch Up, Now at a 4-Week Average of 9.5 Per Week, Compared to 8.25 Four Weeks Before.

A Proposed Benchmark for Evaluating Surge Success Based on the Fatality Trend Line (Blue in the Chart Below):

If the Fatality Trend Line, Which has Been Below 10 for Six Weeks, Stays There for At Least Ten Weeks (Levels Not Seen Since the 2003 Occupation) and

If it is Accompanied by a Parallel Reduction in Iraqi Deaths (to the early 2005 level of less than 100 Per Week, Down from 100+ Now - See US vs Iraqi Fatalities tab),

Then the Surge will Have Achieved a Substantive Measure of Initial Success. "