Not Quixotic enough to attempt to reason Bedlam to rights, my anxieties are turned to the most practicable means of withdrawing us from the ruin into which we have run. It has seized, by its delusions and corruptions, all the members of our governments, general, special, and individual. The evils they have engendered are now upon us, and the question is how we are to get out of them? Shall we build an altar to the old money of the Revolution, which ruined individuals but saved the Republic, and burn on that all the bank charters, present and future, and their notes with them? For these are to ruin both Republic and individuals. The errors of that day cannot be recalled. It is only the ghost of money, and not money itself. Paul's indictment of paper money is, if anything, more moderate in tone than that of Jefferson. Paul’s indictment of Federal Reserve notes, our paper money. The incorporation of a bank, and the powers assumed by this bill, have not, in my opinion, been delegated to the United States, by the Constitution.

… To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power, no longer susceptible of any definition. I consider the foundation of the Constitution as laid on this ground: That all powers not delegated to the United States, by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States or to the people. Jefferson’s opinion on the Constitutionality of a National Bank: Paul calls the Fed unconstitutional Jefferson called its predecessor, the Bank of the United States, unconstitutional: And in matters economic it is hard to slip a photon between Paul and Jefferson. Still, Jefferson’s demilitarization of the United States very much anticipated that proposed by Ron Paul. Congress never voted to declare war but, much like our modern Congresses, authorized the use of force, “to cause to be done all such other acts of precaution or hostility as the state of war will justify.” And so it goes. Jefferson responded by sending in a small force to protect Americans and American interests but believed it unconstitutional to do more absent a declaration of war. Jefferson refused and the Pasha declared war on America not through some declaration but, lore has it, by chopping down the flagpole in front of the American consulate. Upon Jefferson’s 1801 inauguration as president, the Pasha of Tripoli (the sure enough predecessor of Muammar Qaddafi), demanded tribute from America. Some believe him to propose to take America’s diplomatic and military disengagement to an extreme well beyond that of Jefferson who, after all, bought Louisiana - and projected American power “to the shores of Tripoli” - fighting the Barbary pirates. There are principled reasons to dispute with some of Dr. 'Trusted with the destinies of this solitary republic of the world, the only monument of human rights, and the sole depository of the sacred fire of freedom and self-government, from hence it is to be lighted up in other regions of the earth, if other regions of the earth shall ever become susceptible of its benign influence.' Jefferson envisaged America becoming the world's great 'empire of liberty. Jefferson’s anonymous co-authorship of the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions is in many ways the charter text on the primacy of states rights.

Perry came under fire for rhetorically toying with that. Paul unabashedly went to bat for secession after Gov. His anti-(federal)-government convictions often are indistinguishable from those of Dr.

The sacred fire of liberty