Zeal For Truth

Ron Paul has a key primary today in North Carolina, and it is not the presidential primary. Paul has been spending the last four months or so of his campaign to support “pro-liberty” candidates for federal, state and local offices. One of them, B.J. Lawson, is going to see if he can get out of the republican primary.

Lawson seems to hold positions similar to Paul - which is much of the GOP platform (albeit more strictly adhered to and interpreted) as well as an opposition to the current interventionism of the Bush Administration. From his website:

National security is critical, and we need a strong national defense. We also need to stand in support of our troops who answer their country’s call to duty, both when they are deployed and when they return as veterans.

As your Congressman, I will insist that we use deadly force in self-defense, and that we only go to war with a Congressional Declaration of War as specified in Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution. I will resist any attempts to declare preemptive war . As any sheriff knows, “If you start a fight, you lose your rights [to self defense]”.

I will work to keep our nation secure with an economic offense and strong military defense, instead of an economic defense and military offense…

With respect to the Middle East, we can, and must, be a force for stability in the region. We cannot rely on unilateral, preemptive military force to bring “democracy” to unstable countries. Furthermore, democracy shouldn’t even be the goal. Democracy is simply tyranny of the majority. Instead, countries need to be encouraged to build representative governments that protect individuals with the rule of law.

This is a key difference in that Lawson supports the conservative “constitutional war” view rather than the libertarian “anti-war” view. I would suggest that Ron Paul is more the latter, while many of the Ron Paul republicans are somewhere between.

Lawson also takes a more moderate position than Paul on the Federal Reserve:

Constitutional money is gold and silver, not a debt-backed paper currency. There’s no need to disrupt the current system, however, and we don’t need to “fix” our existing paper dollars to some amount of gold or silver. We just need to give those paper dollars some honest competition by again allowing gold and silver currency in addition to Federal Reserve Notes.

Paul has advocated this policy in debates but he has also been publicly supportive of Austrian economics and the abolition of the Fed. Lawson espouses a more careful tone.

Candidates like BJ Lawson and the other Ron Paul republicans, indicate that Paul’s candidacy has awakened a long dormant section of the republican party - a segment that wants to advocate conservatism by conservative means - rather than the current method of conservatism by statist means.