Also interesting is that the author cross-referenced various sections in the Papers with paragraphs in the Constitution.

http://www.cato.org/pubs/articles/preface_pocket-constitution.html

Simply reading that preface leaves most voters well-equipped to begin exploring our founding documents again, often for the first time. In my experience, the combination of this preface and the Constitution is sufficient to clearly illustrate the difference between where we are, and where we should be.

For additional context, the recently released “Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution” by Gutzman is fantastic:

http://www.amazon.com/Politically-Incorrect-Guide-Constitution-Guides/dp/1596985054

BJ

I am proud to have donated to your campaign, will donate again and thank you for spreading the message about the Constitution. On your May 16th e-mail you said “Even $10 supplies about 13 Constitutions to folks who desperately need to learn how our federal government should operate”. Unfortunately, I believe the Constitution is not written in plain easy to understand English so I was concerned that the folks who receive the Constitution won’t understand the language of the Constitution.

Please let me know your thoughts about this.

Thank you,

Edward

Unfortunately, in my opinion, both parties are suspect — especially at the national level. The systems and processes driving Washington today are so antithetical to the tenets of our Constitutional republic that we might as well call our parties the Dance Party and the Dinner Party.

Pretending that today’s political parties are valuable contributors to the national dialog and positive social change is quite a stretch.

Magnus — Thanks for mentioning DownsizeDC, and RTBA. I’m a huge fan of RTBA, RTLA, OSTA, and EPA:

http://www.lawsonforcongress.com/issues/economy

It’s very clear that you’re not running for a business-as-usual job in Washington, so I have to say watch your back. There are a lot of people in the Republican Party who are completely interchangeable with Price, and they’d rather leave a democrat in that seat than have a Republican who means what he says.

Dr. Paul’s been embarrassing them for years, but when he was the only one, they could get away with ignoring him. With you in the congress, and Dr. Sabrin in the Senate, a lot of unconscionable legislation is going to get stopped at the door.

-jcr

the reason why Ron Paul, B.J., myself, and others are in the Republican Party is because the Republican Party is most recently (though it has been a while) the Party that stood for the values of limited government and fiscal and foreign policy prudence. Calvin Coolidge took one of the most “hands off” approaches at the federal level of any President (although it was not completely hands off, as there was still central planning involved and the Federal Reserve was quite activist in its policies), and he was very wary of global entanglement post-WWI. He was also a champion of federalism. Robert Taft, Mr. Republican, was consistently a critic of interventionist foreign policy (he even objected to the creation of NATO) and government largesse. Barry Goldwalter, of course, was the man who started a limited government renaissance movement (that was unfortunately co-opted by neoconservatives). Bob Dole during the 1970s blasted the Democratic Party as the “War Party.” Even as late as the 1990s, Republicans were having budget battles with the Clinton Administration and criticized its interventionist policies in Somalia and the Balkans. (Read John McCain’s comments in the early 1990s on Somalia; they sound quite similar to Ron Paul’s on US Foreign Policy today.)

In contrast, the Democratic Party was at one time a small government, federalist party. This was certainly true of Jefferson, Madison, and to some extent, Jackson. Grover Cleveland, the leader of the “Bourbon Democrats” in the late 1800s, is known as perhaps the most libertarian President in US history and was a vocal proponent of sound money and lasseiz faire economics. However, starting with William Jennings Bryan and Woodrow Wilson, the Democratic Party took a turn for the worst with advocation of increased central planning, aggressive foreign policy, and willingness to violate civil liberties (Wilson’s record on this was terrible). Along with their socialist economic policies and massive spending programs, Truman’s incursion into Korea, the Kennedy/Johnson disaster in Vietnam, and Clinton’s excapades in Somalia, Iraq, the Balkans, and ineffective meddling in the Middle East provide little reason to suspect that the Democratic Party is the Party for us.

The fact is that at this point in time, the only chance for candidate to be elected is if they run as Republicans or Democrats. This means that we have to choose the Party that, at least most recently, is both the Party that share(d) our principles or the Party in which people are more conducive to our message. The GOP is the former, and I find that Republicans who already (at least rhetorically) haters of big government involvement in the economy are more easily convinced of the dangers of government intrusion in other areas than Democrats are convinced of the fallacy of central planning. The task before is to 1) Get elected, and 2) change the Republican Party for the better.

DownsizeDC.org’s Read The Bills Act would go a long way towards fixing this problem and bring accountability back to Congress. When you have a few minutes, please read up on it. I think you’ll find it particularly cogent to what is plaguing Congress today.

As a registered unaffiliated voter who generally votes democratic, the republicans scare the hell out of me. I get the message from Ron Paul and BJ Lawson, but the fact that they choose to associate with the republicans disturbs me. On Iraq, the budget, the constitution, and many more issues, I don’t see where BJ has much in common with Rep Myrick, Sen Dole, or the rest of the NC republican congressional delegation that he was proud to visit and post pictures of. Even Walter Jones got the wool pulled over his eyes by the neocons and voted for the Iraq resolution, and never mind the national embarrassment of “Freedom Fries”. Can I really trust this republican (BJ) to get us out of Iraq, keep us out of Iran, undo the Medicare Part D republican give-away, and stand up to the neocons that have taken over his party? Or will I just see more photo-ops with Myrick, etc who are every bit as damaging to our country as Price?

However, it makes me happy that he would say this. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. In other words, I’m sure there are more gems like that quote where this came from.