Frustrations of the Paleoconservative

The paleoconservatives are members of a dying breed. Although the term itself is probably only a couple decades old, the ideology behind it is older than America, and nearly all of our Founding Fathers adhered to its tenets. They believed that government had no business meddling in the affairs of the private citizen or the free market. They rejected governmental power and messy bureaucracies and embraced personal freedom and liberty. Paleocons hold personal choice and states' rights in the highest regard.

But, where have all the real paleoconservatives gone? Alas, I see but one presidential candidate who still believes in personal liberty and the rights of the individual, and trust me, he stands no chance of winning the election or our freedoms back. He is the Libertarian presidential candidate, a former Republican Congressman from Georgia named Bob Barr. Unfortunately, I have to accept the reality that he cannot possibly win, and so must support the second best (a distant second, I might add) candidate for paleoconservatism, John McCain.

Nobody, not even most Republicans, believes in personal freedom and liberty anymore. In fact, the Republican party is dominated by neoconservatives, who believe that the role of the United States, as the world's sole superpower, is to act as the global policeman. It was the neocons who introduced the concept of the preemptive military strike as a legitimate means of defending America and her people. But now, the fallacies of the preemptive doctrine have been splayed out for all to see: the catastrophe that is the War in Iraq. Not only was this war unjustified from the start, it is sucking billions of dollars (about 1.4 billion dollars every day) out of our budget. Again, I am frustrated by the fact that leaving Iraq immediately is not viable, and am forced to support continuing and winning the war I've opposed from the start.

Taxes, especially the income tax, are another affront to the personal liberties and freedoms of Americans. The income tax, legalized by the 16th Amendment, is essentially government theft, and the Constitution never intended for the government to have such abusive power over the American citizen. When the income tax was first introduced in the late 19th century, it was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, and rightly so. But herein lies more frustrations for the paleoconservative: how else is the government, with its grossly overextended powers, supposed to function without it? So again, I'll grudgingly pay my income tax, until an alternative, fairer tax (such as the Fair Tax) is introduced and the income tax relegated to history's landfill.

The current Democratic ideas regarding government are essentially authoritarian and socialistic. Our government is already overly complicated and wasteful; no one should look to them for liberty. Barack Obama's ideas of "change" are clearly of the wrong species. We need the opposite kind of change he proposes. We need less government spending, less government bureaucracy, more transparency, and most importantly, more freedom. Of course, most Republicans do not offer a much better option, so the frustrated paleoconservative is left to the wayside, along with financial solvency, limited government, and political sanity.