Originally posted by Novise
Churches, charities, and people took care of all of this up until the 30's when welfare was introduced, so I don't really buy what you've said. The government has failed to do a good job of providing for the needy, and only made the problem much worse in the long run.

Even this day and age, you do not have to look very far to find a person who has grown up in a society when there was no government welfare, or very little government welfare. I bet some would even bother to tell us how it's done.

In terms of rights, the government has no right to rob us in order to help others. Our help should come willingly.

Also, these programs will eventually be bankrupt if you keep things at the status quo. Social Security is going to go first. People on welfare only talk about it getting worse, their welfare money is buying less and less for them month after month.

Also to add: If your state wants to have it's own welfare program, nothing stopping it under Ron Paul's vision for America. Just like there is nothing stopping your state from having it's own department of education type deal.

Originally posted by C0le
How would they violate the Constitution when they enforce it?

Churches and charities are local, and depend on the population in the immediate locale to provide. Let's apply the "church and charity" paradigm to, say, New Orleans after Katrina. The charity offices are inoperable. The churches are empty. Outside agencies nearby - Mississippi, northern Louisiana - are busy with their own populations, and cannot get to New Orleans anyway due to damage to the transit system. And yet there are people in New Orleans with no food, no clean water, and no medical care.

"Let them grow gills!" cries Ron Paul, and Novise with him.

Sure, just as soon as they cash their social security checks, pick up their medicaid prescriptions, and come home to a home warmed by government-subsidized heating oil, I'm sure they would just love to tell you all about it. And then we can go find all the immigrants who are in favor of closed borders, and the black men who are in favor of gay segregation. It'll be like a hypocrite field trip.

Article 1, section 8, plus the 16th amendment. Congress can levy any tax it wants and spend it on whatever they judge to be in the best welfare of the nation.

Clearly the answer is more gigantic tax cuts, right? Better yet, let's just take the Ron Paul solution - scrap it. I'm sure all those people who's SS checks are getting smaller would much rather not have them at all, right? Ron Paul thinks so. Sure, you're eating dog food and in danger of hypothermia, grandma, but you're so darned FREE!

Let's say you're a poor person in North Dakota receiving federal aid. Suddenly Ron Paul's VISION FOR AMERICA™ takes place. All states, no feds, all the time! Well, North Dakota doesn't exactly have what we would call a robust economy, and so the state legislature votes to not institute any sort of welfare.

Well, according to Ron Paul, that's your own fault for living in North Dakota. What the hell's wrong with you? But never fear, Oregon, just a few states away, has a thriving economy and a successful welfare program.

But wait! Under the VISION FOR AMERICA™, none of the states you would cross through have quite the same laws. Particularly outstanding is that the Department of Transportation no longer exists under hte VISION FOR AMERICA™ and regulation of hte roads is subject to the states. heading straight west to Oregon, you discover that the Road Barons of Montana have instituted tolls every fifty miles along the interstate, and along many back roads as well. Since if you had the spare change to pay for road use every fifty miles, you wouldn't be crossing Montana in the first place. So you have a hell of a time picking your way through what toll-free roads are left..

Finally, you reach Idaho... and the Idaho State Troopers open fire on you because Idaho has enacted state legislation preventing "illegal interlopers" from crossing its borders. Without the interstate regulations guaranteed by all those unconstitutional programs that Ron Paul did away with in his VISION FOR AMERICA™ the Idaho Legislature has seen fit to declare itself a semisovereign, whites-only state with VERY strict border patrols and rigorous standards of entry. You, being poor, don't qualify.

But you're so free without the feds providing you welfare!

He was utterly against spending squat to aid victims of Katrina, unless some other federal program were cut at the same time to do so. And no, disaster relief and welfare are intimately connected. People who need disaster relief are, essentially, people who have found themselves thrust into the same position as many people who need welfare.

Now yes, the federal government relies on its populace to provide as well. Unlike a private charity however, it has hundreds of millions of people to fall back on, and has networks across the nation as well as abroad. Further, it has access to means of transit and regulation that no private charity can come close to matching. And lastly, the federal government will never turn you away because you worship Jesus in a different way.

Buuuut he does wish to get rid of it, along with such similarly despicable things as public education, drug standards, rural electrification, etc. If a grandparent wants to vote to aid their descendants, Ron Paul is not the choice to do so. Unless I suppose said grandparent is of the sort that thing abject poverty, lack of education, and the possibility of death from common illness "builds character."

By a law that would not exist were it not for the will of the people voting it into place, and subsequently defeating the measures introduced to repeal this right of the government. What is it with Paulistas being populist until they're not?

Please save the rote talking points for people who may actually be inclined to buy them.

First off, if politicians are plundering and pillaging a program for pork - and we can both agree that it happens - then the answer is not as you and your candidate suggest, dismantling the program - the solution is to hold those politicians responsible, throw them out on their asses, and vote in protections to make such plunder more easily traced and punished.

Ah yes, let the people take care of each other by mutual consent. You realize that, while it's a very warm, fuzzy, Norman Rockwell-esque picture, that doesn't actually happen, right? Mangling welfare does not create a matching rise in charity. It's kind of odd to expect people who bitch about their money going to the needy... putting their money towards the needy.

If you go the full Ron Paul, the federal government will be an incredibly different beast than we see today. He's in the "drown it in a bathtub" camp of paleoconservative. That is, he wants the federal government to be weak, powerless, teetering eternally on bankruptcy, and lacking in manpower, with the gaps filled by the states. In other words, federal law and regulation will only be followed if the individual states volunteer to go along with it, if only because the feds wouldn't have the power to have any say otherwise.

Strangely the supporters of a starving federal government still imagine we'd have enough money to pay them for their congressional "service" along with maintaining a strong military, a court system, and all these other chunks of expense. I have yet to hear of a libertarian willing to do pro bono work in politics.

Originally posted by The Walking Fox
Churches and charities are local, and depend on the population in the immediate locale to provide. Let's apply the "church and charity" paradigm to, say, New Orleans after Katrina. The charity offices are inoperable. The churches are empty. Outside agencies nearby - Mississippi, northern Louisiana - are busy with their own populations, and cannot get to New Orleans anyway due to damage to the transit system. And yet there are people in New Orleans with no food, no clean water, and no medical care.

"Let them grow gills!" cries Ron Paul, and Novise with him.

Originally posted by The Walking Fox
Let's say you're a poor person in North Dakota receiving federal aid. Suddenly Ron Paul's VISION FOR AMERICA™ takes place. All states, no feds, all the time! Well, North Dakota doesn't exactly have what we would call a robust economy, and so the state legislature votes to not institute any sort of welfare.

Originally posted by The Walking Fox
But wait! Under the VISION FOR AMERICA™, none of the states you would cross through have quite the same laws. Particularly outstanding is that the Department of Transportation no longer exists under hte VISION FOR AMERICA™ and regulation of hte roads is subject to the states. heading straight west to Oregon, you discover that the Road Barons of Montana have instituted tolls every fifty miles along the interstate, and along many back roads as well. Since if you had the spare change to pay for road use every fifty miles, you wouldn't be crossing Montana in the first place. So you have a hell of a time picking your way through what toll-free roads are left..

Finally, you reach Idaho... and the Idaho State Troopers open fire on you because Idaho has enacted state legislation preventing "illegal interlopers" from crossing its borders. Without the interstate regulations guaranteed by all those unconstitutional programs that Ron Paul did away with in his VISION FOR AMERICA™ the Idaho Legislature has seen fit to declare itself a semisovereign, whites-only state with VERY strict border patrols and rigorous standards of entry. You, being poor, don't qualify.

But you're so free without the feds providing you welfare!