Good article by Paul:

[url=http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul28.html]Were the Founding Fathers Wrong about Foreign Affairs?[/url]

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Last week I appeared on a national television news show to discuss recent events in the Middle East. During the show I merely suggested that there are two sides to the dispute, and that the focus of American foreign policy should be the best interests of America – not Palestine or Israel. I argued that American interests are best served by not taking either side in this ancient and deadly conflict, as Washington and Jefferson counseled when they warned against entangling alliances. I argued against our crazy policy of giving hundred of billions of dollars in unconstitutional foreign aid and military weapons to both sides, which only intensifies the conflict and never buys peace. My point was simple: we should follow the Constitution and stay out of foreign wars.

I was immediately attacked for offering such heresy. We've reached the point where virtually everyone in Congress, the administration, and the media blindly accepts that America must become involved (financially and militarily) in every conflict around the globe. To even suggest otherwise in today's political climate is to be accused of "aiding terrorists." It's particularly ironic that so many conservatives in America, who normally adopt an "America first" position, cannot see the obvious harm that results from our being dragged time and time again into an intractable and endless Middle East war. The empty justification is always that America is the global superpower, and thus has no choice but to police the world.

The Founding Fathers saw it otherwise. Jefferson summed up the noninterventionist foreign policy position perfectly in his 1801 inaugural address: "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations – entangling alliances with none." How many times have we all heard these wise words without taking them to heart? How many champion Jefferson and the Constitution, but conveniently ignore both when it comes to American foreign policy? Washington similarly urged that the US must "Act for ourselves and not for others," by forming an "American character wholly free of foreign attachments." Since so many on Capitol Hill apparently now believe Washington was wrong, they should at least have the intellectual honesty to admit it next time his name is being celebrated.

In fact, when I mentioned Washington the other guest on the show quickly repeated the tired cliche that "We don't live in George Washington's times." Yet if we accept this argument, what other principles from that era should we discard? Should we give up the First amendment because times have changed? How about the rest of the Bill of Rights? It's hypocritical and childish to dismiss certain founding principles simply because a convenient rationale is needed to justify foolishpolicies today. The principles enshrined in the Constitution do not change. If anything, today's more complex world cries out for the moral clarity provided by a noninterventionist foreign policy.

It's easy to dismiss the noninterventionist view as the quaint aspiration of men who lived in a less complicated world, but it's not so easy to demonstrate how our current policies serve any national interest at all. Perhaps an honest examination of the history of American interventionism in the 20th century, from Korea to Vietnam to Kosovo to the Middle East, would reveal that the Founding Fathers foresaw more than we think.

April 17, 2002

Ron Paul is a Republican Representative from Texas.

So we should uncritically accept EVERYTHING believed by EVERYONE in Washington's time?
Washington was a slaveowner you know?  It doesn't invalidate the good things he did or the good ideas he had, but it does prove that he and the other founding fathers were fallible humans.  

I think you are missing the point. He is saying that the argument that "the times have changed" is not a good one because it would destroy EVERYTHING they believe, and would leave Americans at the whim of whatever the current beliefs are. They may be other arguments against what they believed, but state those, and give good reasons why.

Damn straight, Rik.  Why, the Founding Fathers never envisioned automatic weapons or even semiautomatics.  Clearly the Second Amendment has no relevance to such weapons of mass destruction.  If flintlocks were good enough for George Washington, they should be good enough for us today too. [%|]

This is the definition of democracy or mob rule that so many here so myopically desire instead of a republic under the Constitution.

Ron Paul is one of only the handful of reps who abides by the Constitution and he is bad mouthed for it by "patriots". Shows how far this country has sunk into the cesspit.

And you miss the point as well as liberty missed it.  Try reading what I said again without inserting your own prejudice.
Yes, the founding fathers had a lot of incredibly good ideas, including the Bill of Rights and the RKBA (although not ALL the founding fathers supported including the BOR in the Constitution), but the founding fathers were HUMANS.  They were not gods, they were not perfect and they were not fortune-tellers.
If you truly think that every word that proceeded out of the mouth of every founding father is absolute truth, you're a fool.

Sorry, but you and he are both wrong.
No, saying the times have changed does NOT destroy everything they say, but it does make SOME of the things they said less applicable.
I reject your and his all-or-nothing fallacy.