I have paid attention to the Paul phenomenon, and I am not a fan.

I agree he makes some of the right noises, but my take is that his defence of the constitution is of his version of that document. We should all be sufficiently smart to know there is no single interpretation of the constitution that is completely true and correct. There are some ambiguous things that really do come down to one's interpetation where reasonable people do disagree.

So Paul's vision of America is frankly, frightening. Take a bill he introduced into the House in the 110th congress, the "We the People" Act, which would prevent Federal courts from ruling on any case involving:

(A) any claim involving the laws, regulations, or policies of any State or unit of local government relating to the free exercise or establishment of religion;

(B) any claim based upon the right of privacy, including any such claim related to any issue of sexual practices, orientation, or reproduction; or

(C) any claim based upon equal protection of the laws to the extent such claim is based upon the right to marry without regard to sex or sexual orientation;

http://www.brokenlibrarian.org/ronpaul/legislation.html

Essentially, the act would de facto overturn Roe V Wade, and allow Texas to make sodomy illegal again. He would free State laws from having to comply with the Bill of Rights.

That's his "vision" of the constitution. He wants a confederacy.

So to the extent his anti-war and isolationist rhetoric has attracted support, that is somewhat positive, but the man should never be thought of as a good potential president. He would be a disaster, albeit for different reasons than the current crew.

However, if his insurgency pushes the Democrats to act in defence of the mainstream understanding of the constitution, and rule of law, great.

I know this isn't part of Glenn's post but since the Ron Paul internet brigade has shown up, let's deal with this one.

Objectively, returing to the gold standard would be an unmitigated economic catastrophe. The idea of a gold standard is deeply flawed, ergo it is an idea that does not even work "in theory" and would undoubtedly fail in practice, as it did before which is what led to Bretton Woods, and eventually to a fully floating currency.

See, the main problem is that gold is just a commodity and has no inherent value. Its price fluxuates in the market too. So there is no way to base a currency off gold (or anything else) since the value of the "base" of the currency will change based on demand for that base. So when a new giant vein of gold is discovered, the price will drop, and when a new industrial application for gold becomes profitable, the price will rise.

Further, a currency based on gold, would be still vulnerable to currency manipulators. Right now, they can raise or lower the dollar by buying or selling lots of them. In a gold standard world, they do this by buying or selling gold.

When you look at this issue, you find that the real reason that libertarians like Paul have to advocate a gold standard is because they reject government involvement in the market absolutely, and having a government body like the Federal reserve controlling the currency supply is just an ideological non-starter for them. It simply must be wrong, or libertarianism is flawed. As ideologues, the latter cannot be true, so they cling wildly to the former, despite the plethora of real world, empirical experience with gold standard currencies and the disasters that resulted from them.

Basically, the gold standard failed in the giant economic lab that is "history" and yet Paul and other libertarian ideologues want to return to it. This demonstrates how flawed Paul's thinking is. Libertarian ideology is all for him. It cannot be questioned or modified.

We have had an ideologue in the White House for 8 years. I don't see any value in having a different one, particularly one with demonstably flawed and failed ideas like the gold standard.

I'm really uncomfortable with judging someone by the support they attract. When The NY Sun wanted to discredit Walt/Measheimer, they did it by asking David Duke if he agreed with their book, and when he said that he did, they published a big article about it, implying that Duke's agreement must mean the argument is racist.

I agree with the sentiment of this post in general, but the case for Paul being a racist is much stronger than his support among the Stormfront crowd.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/06/02/ron_paul/

"We quadrupled the TSA, you know, and hired more people who look more suspicious to me than most Americans who are getting checked," he says. "Most of them are, well, you know, they just don't look very American to me. If I'd have been looking, they look suspicious ... I mean, a lot of them can't even speak English, hardly. Not that I'm accusing them of anything, but it's sort of ironic."

How does one not "look" American? This reflects a fairly evident racist worldview.

Then you have things like his advocacy of ending birthright citizenship, and support of the Mexico wall.

I could also dig up the newsletters his office sent out in the past describing "fleet footed negroes" among other things. Paul claims not to have written it, but it went out under his name.

I call it sophistry to prop up one's own private interpretation of the constitution as being more authoritative than anyone else's, on no inherenet basis.

Some interpretations are clearly more valid than others, but I dislike the attempts to grab all the credibility by describing one's approach in such laden terminology.