Ron Paul warns of a Fascist Takeover in America

[kanageddaamen]

Mr Khan said:

kanageddaamen said:
The world is way too economically interdependent to believe that if the US's military presence was removed, it would be massive war mongering and civil rights violations.

Regardless of what people actually believe, the US is still the largest economy in the world, by a wide margin. Our troops and bases in other countries are note the things keeping peace, it is the other countries wanting us to continue to buy their stuff. And regardless, you can fly across the Atlantic in a few hours, we could deploy troops to assist an invading ally in no time. He is definitely right about the lack of need for military bases.

People in other countries that say we shouldn't leave just want us there so they don't have to pay for it.

I think he is a little off base about the Fascism thing, in my opinion. Personal liberties wax and wane as society progresses and their values change. I would like to see a rewriting of the commerce clause in the constitution as it is completely RAPED to allow everything from the Fed, to the FCC, to the DEA, which were never the intention of the founders.

A bit more states being the laboratories of democracy would be great as well.

The fed is in part allowed by the 16th amendment, i thought. I know the Federal Reserve came in around the time of the Income Tax, so i always assumed they shared the same constitutional basis, though i could be wrong.

My understanding is that Fed's constitutionality lies in the combination of coinage clause (congres can print money) the elastic clause (congress can make any laws that it deems necessary to carryout its powers) and the commerce clause (congress can regulate interstate commerce, in this case, the banking industry)

As an aside, I remember reading a case about corn regulation.  There was a law that regulated corn use and production on farms, even if the corn was ONLY used on the farm on which it was grown (eg for feed.) The federal government claimed commerce clause powers, but obviously the private use of the corn is NOT interstate commerce.  The Supreme Court ruled that even if the corn was for private use, the growth and use could potentially impact the interstate corn market and therefore congress could regulate that growth without the need to show it even was impacting the interstate corn market.

This ruling basically allows for congress to regulate any and all activity, as any activity could potentially impact some interstate market.

It was also more recently used to allow the DEA to arrest a woman who was growing marijuana for personal use, claiming her growth could impact the interstate marijuana market.  Obsurd.