Hi csl,
Ron Paul is a highly principled man. This is why he is so often wrong.
If Ron Paul understood that principles compromise in order to approach virtue, he'd make a good candidate. Unfortunately, he thinks principles may be polished individually and put on a mantlepiece, like trophies. Individualism. Property rights. Freedom. Small government. Virtues as pure as a bugle note in his ear. And yet not so.
Once you allow that nature's original state is chaos rather than beneficence, and that life's transactions occur atop a sea of competing interests, then you realise that purity of principle isn't there to be had. We properly affect compromises all the time. The only way to operate in a purely principled way is to deny the value of competing principles; each principle trims the other to repair its faults; virtue results.
Individual action is restrained where it causes damage to the interests of others. Property rights are granted where the public permits it, but not where it detects a common interest. Freedom is reined in by law and law by democracy. The voters in one party undo the aberrations of those in the other.
To put it biblically, once we left Eden we could no longer dwell amidst perfection. Admitting to a mixture of influences and interests which naturally conflict, there's no turning back. Our pathway is blocked by the angels.
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