“A decent society never accepts or justifies torture...."

“A decent society never accepts or justifies torture.  It dehumanizes both torturer and victim, yet seldom produces reliable intelligence.  Torture by rogue American troops or agents puts all Americans at risk, especially our rank-and-file soldiers stationed in dozens of dangerous places around the globe.  It is not difficult to imagine American soldiers or travelers being taken hostage and tortured as some kind of sick retaliation for Abu Ghraib.  

Beyond that is the threat posed by unchecked executive power. [...] But the argument for extraordinary wartime executive powers has been made time and time again, always with bad results and the loss of our liberties.  That’s why it is precisely during times of relative crisis that we should adhere most closely to the Constitution, not abandon it.  The Founders were especially concerned about the consolidation of power during times of war and national emergencies.” -Pages 119 & 120 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

“For a patriotic American, there is nothing radical about..."

“For a patriotic American, there is nothing radical about this attitude at all.  This is how the Founding Fathers thought.  If our critics want to repudiate the Founding Fathers, let them go ahead and do it.  If they won’t be honest enough to do so, they should at least refrain from condemning those of us who still believe in the wisdom they left for posterity.” -Pages 118 & 119 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

“...why, in a free society with a supposedly..."

“...why, in a free society with a supposedly independent media, did arguably the most influential in the United States keep Americans in the dark about a program like this?  The answer we were given involved unspecified national security concerns that the Times supposedly did not want to jeopardize.  But that explanation does not hold water at all.   We may safely assume that terrorists are clever enough to realize that our government is listening in on their conversations, even without the Times telling them so.  The very name of the Foreign Intelligence Act (FISA) of 1978 is a dead giveaway.  

As far as we have been told, the only way that this program, administered by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), diverged from previous intelligence efforts is that this one operated without FISA warrants- warrants issued in secret by special courts, in conformity with the 1978 Act.  Awareness of this aspect of the program would have done nothing to aid terrorists.  FISA warrants are issued in secret anyway, so neither under FISA nor under the NSA program would a terrorist know for sure that the government was eavesdropping on his conversations. 

It looks very much like the old story:  the government says “national security” and the natural and normal skepticism that our Founding Fathers taught us to have toward the government is promptly abandoned.  The simple and straightforward reason the executive branch wanted the program kept secret, its consistent obfuscation notwithstanding, seems to be that it violated the laws. 

The reasons we were given for why the program was necessary were at least as unconvincing as the Time’s defense of concealing it.  On the one hand, we were told that only targets of the program were people with links to terrorist organizations like al Qaeda.  At the same time, we were told that the sheer number of targets made FISA warrant applications impracticable. 

I believe that constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald has identified a fatal contradiction in these claims.  It is is true that the executive branch knew the locations of so many people with al Qaeda links, why were they seeking merely to eavesdrop on their conversations?  Why were they not arresting them instead?  This, after all, is an administration that has detained people indefinitely, without charges, on the basis of sometimes shaky evidence of an al Qaeda connection.  This time, we are supposed to believe that the administration had knowledge of countless al Qaeda figures and decided to let them remain free?  Not plausible, and that is why it seems likely that the targets of this surveillance included many Americans who had no ties to al Qaeda or terrorism at all.”  -Pages 109-111 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"And let us not forget that the Constitution grants Congress..."

"And let us not forget that the Constitution grants Congress, and Congress alone, the authority to regulate trade and craft tax laws.  Congress cannot cede that authority to the WTO or any other international body.  Nor can the president legally sign any treaty that purports to do so.  Our Founders never intended for America to become entangled in global trade schemes, and they certainly never intended to have our domestic laws overridden by international bureaucrats." -Pave 99 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"The Founding Fathers did not intend for every American neighborhood...."

"The Founding Fathers did not intend for every American neighborhood to be exactly the same - a totalitarian impulse if there ever was one- or that disputes over competing values should be decided by federal judges. This is the constitutional approach to deciding all issues that are not spelled out explicitly in our founding document: let neighbors and localities govern themselves.

The Founding Fathers would be astonished to observe how politicized our society has become, with every matter on which people differ becoming a federal issue to be resolved in Washington. Jefferson warned, "When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated." Are we listening?

In short, just as we should reject empire abroad, we should also reject it at home. One-size-fits-all social policy, dictated by unelected judges from an imperial capital, is not the system Americans signed on for when they ratified the Constitution, and they have never formally sanctioned such a thing." -Pages 62 & 63 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"One of the most contentious issues in our public life..."

"One of the most contentious issues in our public life over the past three and a half decades has been abortion.  As a physician, and in particular as an obstetrician who has delivered over 4,000 babies, I have always had a special interest in the subject of abortion.  When I studied medicine at Duke Medical School from 1957 to 1961, the subject was never raised.  By the time of my medical residency at the University of Pittsburgh in the mid-1960s, though, wholesale defiance of the laws against abortion was taking place in various parts of the country, including my own.

Residents were encouraged to visit various operating rooms in order to observe the procedures that were being done.  One day I walked into an operating room without knowing what I was walking into, and the doctors were in the middle of performing a C-section.  It was actually an abortion by hysterotomy.  The woman was probably six months along in her pregnancy, and the child she was carrying weighed over two pounds.  At that time doctors were not especially sophisticated, for lack of a better term, when it came to killing the baby prior to delivery, so they went ahead with the delivery and put the baby in a bucket in the corner of the room.  The baby tried to breathe, and tried to cry, and everyone in the room pretended the baby wasn't there.  I was deeply shaken by this experience, and it hit me at that moment just how important the life issue was.
.....
The federal government should not play any role in the abortion issue, according to the Constitution.  ...  the issue would revert to the states, where it constitutionally belongs. 
.....
To those who argue that we cannot allow the states to make decisions on abortion since some will make the wrong ones, I reply that this is an excellent argument for world government- for how can we allow individual countries to decide on abortion or other moral issues, if some may make the wrong decisions?  Yes the dangers of a world government surely speak for themselves. 

Let us therefore adopt the constitutional position, one that is achievable and can yield good results but that shuns the utopian idea that all evil can be eradicated.  The Founding Fathers' approach will not solve all problems, and it will not be perfect.  But anyone expecting perfection in this world is going to be consistently disappointed."  Pages 58-61 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"What the Founding Fathers have to teach us about...."

"What the Founding Fathers have to teach us about foreign policy became all the more important, and yet all the more ignored, in the wake of the horrific attacks of September 11, 2001. 

In the weeks that followed that fateful day, most Americans' focus was on identifying the sponsors of the attacks and punishing them.  That was sensible enough.  I myself voted to track down al Queda in Afghanistan.  But people were bound to start wondering, eventually, why we were attacked- not because they sought to excuse the attackers, of course, but out of a natural curiosity regarding what made these men tick.  Looking for motive is not the same thing as making excuses; detectives always look for the motive behind crime, but no one thinks they are looking to excuse murder.

Seven years later, though, our political class still refuses to deal with the issue in anything but sound bites and propaganda.  The rest of the world is astonished at this refusal to speak frankly about the reality of our situation.  And yet our safety and security may depend on it."  -Page 15 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"There are those who condemn noninterventionists...."

"There are those who condemn noninterventionists for being insufficiently ambitious, for their unwillingness to embrace "national greatness" - as if a nation's greatness could be measured according to any calculus other than the virtues of its people and the excellence of its institutions.  These critics should have the honesty to condemn the Founding Fathers for the same defect.  They wouldn't dare.  But it would be refreshing to hear it stated in so many words: our current political class is blessed with historic genius, and Jefferson, Washington, and Madison were contemptible fools." -Page 14 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"Anyone who advocates the noninterventionist foreign policy....."

"Anyone who advocates the noninterventionist foreign policy of the Founding Fathers can expect to be derided as an isolationist.  I myself have never been an isolationist.  I favor the very opposite of isolation: diplomacy, free trade, and freedom of travel.  The real isolationists are those who impose sanctions and embargoes on countries and peoples across the globe because they disagree with the internal and foreign policies of their leaders.  The real isolationists are those who choose to use force overseas to promote democracy, rather than seeking change through diplomacy, rather than seeking change through diplomacy, engagement, and by setting a positive example.  The real isolationists are those who isolate their country in the court of world opinion by pursuing needless belligerence and war that have nothing to do with legitimate national security concerns." -Pages 10-11 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"If the Founders' advice is acknowledged at all....."

"If the Founders' advice is acknowledged at all, it is dismissed on the grounds that we no longer live in their times.  The same hackneyed argument could be used against any of the other principles the Founders gave us.  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 foolish policies today.  The principles enshrined in the Constitution do not change.  If anything, today's more complex world cries out for the moral clarity of a noninterventionist foreign policy.

It is 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. "  -Page 10 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"Our Founding Fathers gave us excellent advice on foreign policy. "

"Our Founding Fathers gave us excellent advice on foreign policy.  Thomas Jefferson, in his first inaugural address, called for "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none." -Page 9 of The Revolution, A Manifesto

"Early on in my presidential campaign, people began...."

"Early on in my presidential campaign, people began describing my message and agenda as a "revolution." In a way, it is, albeit a peaceful one.  In a country with a political debate as restricted as ours, it is revolutionary to ask whether we need troops in 130 countries and whether the noninterventionist foreign policy recommended by our Founding Fathers might not be better.  It is revolutionary to ask whether the accumulation of more and more power in Washington has been good for us.  It is revolutionary to ask fundamental questions about privacy, police-state measures, taxation, social policy, and countless other matters. 

This revolution, though, is not altogether new.  It is a peaceful continuation of the American Revolution and the principles of our Founding Fathers: liberty, self-government, the Constitution, and a noninterventionist foreign policy.  That is what they taught us, and that is what we now defend."  -Page 6 of The Revolution, A Manifesto