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Since the big three candidates, McCain, Romney, and Giuliani, are getting all the coverage, Will’s decision to cover a dark horse candidate like Rep. Paul is interesting.
Will vs. Paul on the Constitutional Limits of Government
by Dan Phillips
Will barely musters a constitutional defense for big government. It's as if he doesn’t feel he needs to. He writes, "Even before the Founders’ generation passed from the scene, the government was slipping off the leash that Madison said – and Paul says – the Constitution puts on it." This is unfortunately an unequivocally true statement. So it was. But isn’t that really evidence for the anti-Federalist’s case that the Constitution’s safeguards were insufficient, instead of proof that the Founders didn’t really mean it. Will seems to suggest that all the Founders had their fingers crossed. "Ha, Ha. Fooled you." (An anti-Federalist case can and has been made that the Founders really were up to no good – Patrick Henry’s "I smell a rat!" – but that is not the case Will is making. Will is making the hyper-Federalist case.)
This is very important:
Will likely finds frequent conservative appeals to the Constitution and limited government insincere and hypocritical, which they no doubt are. Perhaps in that sense Will’s candor is refreshing. I think Will would be happy if Rep. Paul, who actually means what he says, sufficiently embarrasses his "conservative" colleagues out of their frequent invocations of the Constitution when they recognize the true implications of strictly following that document. Let us hope and pray that Rep. Paul’s candidacy has the opposite effect. That instead it embarrasses some "conservatives" into re-adopting the limits contained in a document their stated guiding philosophy used to consider more than a rhetorical flourish.
Last edited on Wed Feb 21st, 2007 11:44 am by Joe Kelley