Niciodată, în istoria SUA, cetățenii americani n-au fost puși într-o situație mai ingrată ca la prezentele alegeri, să aleagă între doi reprezentanți ai aceluiași curent progresiv, total opus principiilor Părinților Fondatori. Iar singura voce apropiată de doctrina inițială a Partidului Republican, cea a lui Ron Paul, este marginalizată și considerată excentrică. Ron Paul este în prezent considerat de proprii săi colegi drept un radical. Însă, dacă el este radical, radicali au fost și cei doi Părinți Fondatori, care au scris, unul Declarația de Independență, celălalt Constituția SUA, Jefferson și Madison. Dovadă: descrierea doctrinei republicane de la 1800, făcută nu de către un fundamentalist republican, ci de către istoricul Henry Adams (strănepotul și nepotul celor doi președinți Adams, dușmanii de moarte ai republicanilor) în 1882, în biografia sa dedicată lui John Randolph of Roanoke (de departe cel mai interesant politician de peste ocean, denumit de altfel de Russell Kirk, ”aristocratul libertarian”).

Limitarea prin orice mijloc a puterii federale centralizate, limitarea puterii judiciare (”cea mai iresponsabilă și periculoasă” componentă a puterii federale), întărirea puterii statelor în defavoarea guvernului federal, politica externă pacifistă - aceste principii constituiau esența doctrinei republicane de la 1800. Judecând după ele, Ron Paul este un republican loial principiilor originare, în timp ce Mitt Romney și majoritatea membrilor Partidului Republican, simpli eretici.

“The republican party, which assumed control of the government in 1801, had taken great pains to express its ideas so clearly that no man could misconceive them. At the bottom of its theories lay, as a foundation, the historical fact that political power had, in all experience, tended to grow at the expense of human liberty. Every government tended towards despotism; contained somewhere a supreme, irresponsible, self-defined power called sovereignty, which held human rights, if human rights there were, at its mercy. Americans believed that the liberties of this continent depended on fixing a barrier against this supreme central power called national sovereignty, which, if left to grow unresisted, would repeat here all the miserable experiences of Europe, and, falling into the grasp of some group of men, would be the centre of a military tyranny; that, to resist the growth of this power, it was necessary to withhold authority from the government, and to administer it with the utmost economy, because extravagance generates corruption, and corruption generates despotism; that the Executive must be held in check; the popular branch of the legislature strengthened, the Judiciary curbed, and the general powers of government strictly construed ; but, above all, the States must be supported in exercising all their reserved rights, because, in the last resort, the States alone could make head against a central sovereign at Washington. These principles implied a policy of peace abroad and of loose ties at home, leaned rather towards a confederation than towards a consolidated union, and placed the good of the human race before the glory of a mere nationality.

(...)

That was the doctrine of the republican party in 1800, the essence of republican principles, and for many years the undisputed faith of a vast majority of the American people. The principle that the central government was a machine, established by the people of the States for certain purposes and no others, was itself equivalent to a declaration that this machine could lawfully do nothing but what it was expressly empowered to do by the people of the States; and who except the people of the States could properly decide when the machine overstepped its bounds? To make the Judiciary a final arbiter was to make the machine master, for the Judiciary was not only a part of the machine, but its most irresponsible and dangerous part. The class of lawyers, trained, as they were, in the common law of England, could conceive of no political system without a core of self-defined sovereignty in the government, and the Judiciary merely reflected the training of the bar. Judiciary, Congress, and Executive, all parts of one mechanism, could be restrained only by the constant control of the people of the States. There can be little doubt that this was the opinion of Patrick Henry in 1800, as it was of Randolph, Madison, and Jefferson; on no other theory, as they believed, could there be a guaranty for their liberties, and certain it is that the opposite doctrine, which made the central machine the measure of its own powers, offered no guaranty to the citizen against any stretch of authority by Congress, President, or Judiciary, but in principle was merely the old despotic sovereignty of Europe, more or less disguised.

Not, therefore, in principle did Randolph differ from Patrick Henry; it was in applying the principle that their ideas clashed so rudely; and this application always embarrassed the subject of states' rights. That the central government was a mere creature of the people of the States, and that the people of those States could unmake as they had made it, was a fact unquestionable and unquestioned; but it was one thing to claim that the people of Virginia had a constitutional right to interpose a protest against usurpations of power at Washington, and it was another thing to claim that they should support their protest by force. Patrick Henry and Mr. Madison shrank from this last appeal to arms, which John Randolph boldly accepted; and, in his defense, it is but fair to say that a right which has nowhere any ultimate sanction of force is, in law, no right at all.” (Henry Adams - John Randolph)

PS: Interesantă este, în acest context, și dilema unor auto-declarați libertarieni români, care, după ce au susținut necondiționat reprezentantul cel mai important al centralismului autohton (atât dâmbovițean, cât și european), pe Traian Băsescu, și dictatura puterii judecătorești, fără a realiza pericolul reprezentat de aceasta într-o democrație, acum se întreabă retoric: Eu cu cine votez?