Personal Asides: Hillary’s Tears Real...The McCain Cabinet Readjusted…A Zen Motto for the Happy Life…Ron Paul’s Nation View.

Hillary’s Tears.

I can sympathize with Hillary Clinton’s tears that welled up in her eyes during her talk to the New Hampshire crowd yesterday—and, frankly, thought Bill Kristol’s unfeeling reaction on Fox was unfortunate. No one who has ever been in a campaign that is losing can imagine that tears like hers were put on. But on one thing Kristol was right…and it is understandable…Hillary’s tears were largely for herself and her frustration at apparently losing her bid for the presidency after so much work. It is not over yet but unless there is a dramatic turn, very nearly.

Politicians have a way of transforming others’ sadness to themselves. At Richard Nixon’s funeral people were stunned that Bob Dole almost convulsed in sobs. Again—it was a sharing of frustration common to all politicians. Dole also broke down in tears when his once arch-enemy George H. W. Bush conceded to Bill Clinton. Reason: not for Bush but because Dole empathized with a World War II vet like himself who lost to a younger man, Dole understanding that his generation was rapidly passing from the scene: good reason for tears.

McCain.

It may have been silly to postulate a McCain cabinet yesterday—but I did it…and I want to make one amendment. Rather than John Bolton for secretary of state, I’d give it to Joe Lieberman. That would serve as a kind of symbolic realignment of the parties in the same way FDR sought to do when he named Henry L. Stimson, a former Republican secretary of state in 1940, as his secretary of war along with Frank Knox of Chicago, publisher of the “Chicago Daily News” and the 1936 Republican vice presidential nominee as his secretary of the navy.

Zen Motto for the Happy Life.

I have come across a superb motto for the happy life, written not by a leader of any of the great religions but by a Zen. “The Master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion. He simply pursues his vision of excellence in everything he does, leaving others to determine whether he is at work or at play. To him, he is always doing both.”

Ron Paul.


In all these debates I’ve been keeping an eye on Ron Paul. Gaunt, haggard, small and delicate with a high voice, it seems he as if he possesses a separate lexicon for the real meaning of the campaign. The other day he announced, “The Constitution gives no authority for a central bank!”

Imagine that! This statement, his followers say, is the hottest one he can give, causing his followers to blow off the roof and stomp their feet. It’s been called his biggest applause line. Here everybody else is talking how to end or win the war in Iraq, how to fight terrorism, what size the military should be to undertake this effort, how Supreme Court nominees should be chosen. And we have forgotten that the Constitution utterly has neglected to give authority for a central bank! Alexander Hamilton who was one of the prime sponsors of the Constitution had forgotten this as well, evidently.

While we look at the spending bills that have been pushed in the House by both sides, we have utterly forgotten that Congressman Paul has introduced one to legalize un-pasteurized milk! A good number of people assume that the government has the right to protect health of people drinking milk. Do you know that the rights of the raw milk lobby have been violated in this way? How awful!

Paul’s statement is revelatory: “I support the right of people to drink whatever they want! I challenge the fact that only the government can make sure we’re safe so we need the government to protect us. I don’t think we’d all die of unsafe food if we didn’t have the FDA. Someone else would do it.”

How refreshing it would be to elect someone president who would confound our enemies the terrorists by saying that paper money is a hoax—why it’s “fiat money.” Someone who has the willingness to talk about the gold standard once again. It’s been more than a century since the gold standard was a subject of presidential politics—with William Jennings Bryan saying we would all be crucified on a cross of gold. Paul sees the diabolical sin as happening in 1933 when Roosevelt uncoupled the currency from gold—debauched it. This removed limits from federal spending, he believes, allowing the printing of an endless supply of money, thus leaving citizens potential victims to inflation.

But even worse—the printing of money was by the government! And compulsory! Private currencies were forbidden! Americans had no choice but to use the government’s money! Can you imagine inauguration day when President Ron Paul advances to take the oath and says the troops are coming home immediately from all over the world…that he is listing the FDA among those agencies he will recommend being disbanded so that milk will be once again un-pasteurized unless private industry wants to do it…that he will recommend competing currencies—that if people want to circulate gold or silver coins or scrip backed by metal reserves, they can, that he will recommend the Federal Reserve and the IRS Code be repealed. All in the same speech?

Cheer the day! Wait until Washington is taken over by the anarcho-capitalists, the people who think the U.S. itself bombed the twin trade towers, antiwar lefties, objectivists, paleocons, hemp activists, tax resisters and liberated pot smokers. Why there’ll be a privately funded statue erected on private grounds to the memory of Timothy Leary, the patron of liberalized marijuana laws, who once hosted a fund-raiser for Paul. And listen, another privately funded statue would be erected at the citadel of individual freedom, Pahrump, Nevada, a town 60 miles west of Las Vegas…the home of legal brothels and the home of Heidi Fleiss. But don’t think Dr. Paul will be corrupted. He’s the liberationist hero, who has never smoked a cigarette, doesn’t swear, holds down his drinking to an occasional glass of wine, has been married to the same woman for 50 years and has three children (out of five total) who like him are physicians.

And doesn’t make judgments. The other day on a flight to Vegas for a rally in a tiny chartered plane, Paul’s staff asked him if he preferred the cabin lights on or off. He wouldn’t say. You see his credo is let adults make their own choices; liberty works. So the staff had to guess. Ah, imagine what the White House and the federal government would be like with that visionary view. No president to be bossy. He says, “I don’t gamble but I’m the gambler’s best friend,” because he supports online casinos. He’s never fired a gun but is a 2nd amendment crusader.

An Indiana company, NORFED, a coin company will be back in business. Taking a cue from Dr. Paul who was involved in the business of numismatics as “a labor of love” as he says, it issued and sold thousands of Ron Paul dollars with his angular face on them, arguing the people should have the right to back the money they trust. The FBI raided the place and accused NORFED of trying to “undermine the U. S. government’s financial systems by issuance of a non-governmental competing currency for the purpose of repealing the Federal Reserve and Internal Revenue Code.”

Exactly! Let us then give this country a dash of real liberty. Dispense with McCain and Romney and Hillary and Obama. And give us Ron Paul. It has one advantage: it would confuse the world so totally that for a while there would be peace in our time.