Editor’s Note: This is a rebuttal article to Lee Clarion columnist Bobby Debelak’s article concerning Ron Paul. To read Debelak’s full article from the Nov. 14 go to leeclarion.com.

In response to the Debelak Nov. 14 Clarion article: Thanks for considering Ron Paul in your column. In my opinion, the more people learn about his views, the better it will be for the country and so I applaud your generally favorably review.

I should say at the outset that I have recently become the faculty sponsor for a “Ron Paul for President” club here on the Lee campus. In that capacity, I would like to offer some slight modifications to your otherwise thoughtful column.
First, Ron Paul is a member of the Republican Party and has been elected to Congress from Texas 10 times, always as a Republican. He did, one time, run for US President as a Libertarian. However, I would not agree that this makes him a “Libertarian disguising himself as a Republican.” His support is very broad and comes from Republicans, Independents, Democrats, and Libertarians! This was demonstrated in his amazing grass roots, fund raising, campaign that brought in more that $20 million in the 4th quarter of 2007 from over 130,000 individual donors — many of whom had never donated to a political campaign before!

Of course, most Paul supporters are Republicans who are frustrated with the “moderate” Republican Presidential candidates who promote the same kinds of things that got us in our current mess: more Federal programs, more Federal spending, and ultimately more Federal abuse of the US Constitution and trampling on the rights of states, local governments, and individual citizens. In fact, syndicated columnist Cal Thomas recently well captured this frustration: “Mike Huckabee… sounds like a big government Republican. The only one behaving like a real Republican is Ron Paul, who actually wants to cut spending and get government out of our lives.” (http://www.calthomas.com/index.php?news=2158)

Second, Paul actually differs with Libertarians in some areas. For example, he does believe that the US can levy taxes of various sorts including import and export duties, maintain military forces, and wage Constitutional wars (i.e. those that are voted on and approved by Congress) since this is in the Constitution (Article 1, section 8). The Libertarian party says, among other things, that “we oppose all intervention by government into the area of economics” (http://www.lp.org/issues/platform_all.shtm), and as you say, many Libertarians would eliminate any standing army.

Third, Ron Paul does indeed support individual rights but he probably does not accept a Federal “right to privacy” as you have stated since that right is no where in the Constitution according to a strict constructionist view (see the dissent to Roe vs. Wade filed by Justices White and Rehnquist) - and Paul is certainly a strict constructionist! Thus, you have set out a specious foundation for Roe that leads you to the wrong conclusion that opposition to it, and a championship of individual rights, are “conflicting.” In fact, Paul would return decisions about abortion to the states and local governments as was the case before the horrible Roe decision. Of course, Paul as an OB/GYN doctor delivered more than 4,000 babies and never performed an abortion!

Finally, your point about paying off the national debt is a good one but omits the fact that Paul accepts excise taxes and other taxes (but, of course, not the Federal Income tax which is probably not legal or Constitutional [see the documentary “From Freedom to Facism”]). Paul has pointed out that the US government ran reasonably well with very little debt and without a Federal Income Tax up until 1913. Even today excise taxes and corporate taxes alone could run the Federal government without debt at the spending levels of the early 1990’s.

Daniel Hoffman is an Associate Professor of History at Lee University. He is the faculty sponsor the “Ron Paul for President” club.