Conservatives should vote for Ron Paul, and NOT Fred Thompson

Again, your lack of education rears its ugly head. Any power not specifically enumerated in the Constitution is unconstitutional. This is the original intent, which has been perverted by the Supreme Court over the years. You have a lot of studying to do, but like most conservatives, you won't get around to it. After all, in the common conservative mind, book learning is something for liberals to do. If you were even remotely conservative, you would know that virtually everything the government does is unconstitutional, and therefore, it wouldn't be surprising to you that I would use the word so much. But then again, you're obviously a big-government liberal, which is why you shouldn't have taken this debate. You don't have a single conservative principle that I can see. 1. Again, your complete and total lack of constitutional knowledge shows itself. Congress determines the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court -- this is a power enumerated and delegated to Congress under the Constitution. A simple bill, passed by Congress and signed into law by the president, could remove the issue of abortion from federal jurisdiction, thus returning it to the states. Roe v. Wade would thus be irrelevant. 2. The statement that you made -- "the UN . . . does a lot of a good for the world. From keeping the peace in conflicting areas of different nations to helping poorer nations to get back on their feet" -- is the liberal/socialist, world-government, internationalist philosophy. A self-described conservative would have NEVER made that statement fifty years ago. Why is it that the conservatives have yielded so much ground to the Left? Was the Left right about virtually every issue in the thirties, forties, fifties, and sixties? If so, then what makes you think the Left is wrong now? I mean, you DON'T think that on any issue that really matters: You have the traditional leftist foreign policy, the traditional leftist fiscal and monetary policy. That leaves only "social issues" to distinguish you as a conservative. And as far as how other countries perceive us, I think halting the bombings and assassinations would more than negate whatever fallout there was from the UN. How the other world views us is only important from within the confines of the Constitution and our national interests -- we are not to bend over backwards (or forward) in the name of world opinion alone. Okay, you need another NAFTA lesson: NAFTA is filled with rules and regulations (not free trade!) which are enforced by North American Trade Commissioners. The purpose of NAFTA is to "level the playing field" of the three countries. Who enforces these efforts to "level the playing field" -- the unelected NAFTA commissioners. What NAFTA really does is take away the constitutional authority of Congress to regulate trade and puts it in the hands of supranational bureaucrats. And what authority do these commissioners have? Well, they can levy fines on businesses, search the premises of business, and use American courts to enforce multinational labor or environmental regulations put into "law" not by the U.S. Congress, but by NAFTA commissioners. See Article 756 of NAFTA. For more, see my debate on the subject at http://www.debate.org... 3. Look at this, everyone. Now what's acceptable for a "conservative" is any candidate who DOESN'T say "I like the IRS, I want it to stay." Where have your standards gone? Fred Thompson, like every other Republican (including, no, ESPECIALLY Huckabee) sees no immorality in taxation and wealth redistribution -- particularly the most heinous tax of all, the inflation tax of fiat-money central banking. This is what distinguishes Ron Paul and makes him the clear choice of true conservatives in the Old Right tradition. 4. Universities are filled with Marxists, Keynesians, and monetarists -- all discredited theories. If you are counting on your formal education to teach you about real economics, you are going to be either disappointed or willfully misled into a blissful sea of ignorance. The subject taught in schools is not even properly called economics -- it is econometrics, and there is an important distinction. And I do have a degree in the subject -- why do you keep saying I don't? It doesn't matter, though. There are plenty of people with degrees -- including PhDs -- who are idiots. If you don't believe that, then you're REALLY not in touch with conservatism and popular conservative thought. 5. Um, yes it does. The stated goal of the CFR is to run an "end round on national sovereignty." He is a member of that organization. He also supports supra-national governments like the UN, the WTO, and the fiat-money Fabian socialists at the IMF and World Bank, etc. 6. She's 41? Okay. My bad. You're right, she is hot. You win this point. I thought she was like 25. I concede half a point here, but the issue remains problematic for anyone who believes in family values. BEEFS: 1. America is able to be defeated, and the defeat of the Empire is inevitable. We have been defeated in every war since WWII, because every war has been an undeclared one with no exit strategy and no real objective. Don't bring up Gulf War I -- this is just an extension of that war. That war never really ended, considering the fact we bombed Iraq almost without stop from '91 to '01. And you wonder why they hate us? Look, the American Empire is going down. The only question is whether we do it as smoothly as possible, or whether we go down in flames like Rome. If you think we can afford to police the world, the international financial markets and Forex beg to differ. You can't make the markets act like you want via force, and the Empire is never going to be big enough or strong enough to force the world to accept our worthless fiat money like it forces the citizens of our country. 2. This is another liberal argument -- "the nation evolves" -- i.e. the Constitution is a "living document" that can be "interpreted over time" by the dictators in black robes. Wow. Again, this debate was for CONSERVATIVES, who by definition are supposed to be strict constructionists -- not liberals who happen to not like abortion. If YOU and your pro-Fed, pro-blind obedience to university professors, pro-income tax, pro-UN, anti-free trade, pro-Constitution as a "living document" ilk are what qualifies today as conservatives, then where is the difference between conservatives and liberals? It's a joke. Real conservatives know better and that's why they should vote for Ron Paul.