Bonus Post 3: The Conclusion to the Manifesto

     In the second part Ron Paul makes a more general argument, going from specific points that liberals and conservatives truly do disagree on and moves onto more unilateral agreements between both sides such as the recent erosion of civil rights, as a strong finish which is not as controversial among the factions' dissidents. Doing so no doubt strengthens the sense of contingency that Ron Paul so desperately needs and aspires to in order for his movement to have any momentum going forward. Paul espouses economic sanctions based infamously on commodities such as gold and silver. Dr. Paul completely dismisses the argument that times are changing and so must standards for the economy that have been held in the very infancy of the country. Following the conclusion of that argument, Paul moves onto civil liberties and wisely melds his libertarian point of view very deftly with egregious violations of people, something nearly everyone would reasonably be against. By doing so, he makes libertarian-ism de facto with the fight against the degradation of American rights. The result is a very skewed, if technically correct, reassurance that libertarian-ism would not have constitutionally delegated rights limited by a perpetual-war government. Finally the final issue Dr. Paul touches upon is the need to end money in politics, once again a very popular position with the people, if hated by virtually all establishment representatives who do not have as big a loyal following to help fund their campaigns. He argues for the importance of federal government to shrink, presenting is as the ultimate solution to corruption, as he presents drastically reduced government as the answer to all issues. But the issue with the states' rights Ron Paul so feverishly supports is that the U.S. has a demonstrable history of doing the wrong thing when looking back at history. Sure liberty for all may sound nice, but without any guarantee that empty promise cannot be fulfilled. The most significant example in support of this position is when many of the U.S. states chose to keep African Americans disenfranchised. Such an occurrence is paradoxical to the promise of freedom that Paul presents, as freedom to choose is not freedom guaranteed. There has to be a leader to guide the United States and keep it together on issues such as these as is famously said, "a nation divided cannot stand," the failure of which would no doubt be devastating and unfeasible in terms of national security  in such turbulent times.