Excellent piece about Ron Paul in The Red and Black

Something I haven't let y'all in on nearly as much as I should have: I am a die-hard Bulldogs fan. When the girl of your dreams is a grad student at the University of Georgia - the school whose motto should be "Play Football or Die" - you tend to get caught up in the spirit of the place very quickly as you start making regular visits to Athens.

Seriously though: it's a great university. Even though I'll always be proud of my alma mater Elon, you can often find me wearing a Georgia Bulldogs t-shirt whenever I'm out. So I was especially glad to find that this very good article about presidential candidate Ron Paul was written by J. Patrick Rhamey for The Red and Black, the student newspaper at UGA ...

What are our traditional values? Looking across history, they are most certainly not wire-tapping, secret prisons, and preemptive wars. The Republican Party gained power with Newt Gingrich to minimize the size of government, lower taxes, encourage free trade, and get government out of our lives.

Unfortunately, they did the opposite and have paid the price.

It is time to elect someone who represents the political views of Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater and Dwight Eisenhower. A patriot who will not put our brave fighting men and women needlessly into harm's way. A candidate who supports policies of economic growth for the middle class such as lower taxes and minimizing government. A man of outstanding character who has been married to the same woman for fifty years and opposes abortion. A veteran who will secure our borders. This is the type of Reagan Republican we need back in the White House.

I encourage Georgians of all parties to take a moment to investigate Paul as a candidate on his website, www.ronpaul2008.com. In this great struggle against terror, amidst the many successes and setbacks, I fear we may be losing sight of that which our fighting men and women are dying to protect: individual freedom. If we lose sight of that, the terrorists have most surely accomplished their goals.

We must elect a candidate who will pursue a humble, defensive foreign policy. One who will bring our fighting men and women home to protect us here, not in Iraq, Afghanistan or Iran.

To quote another great Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower, "Preventive war was an invention of Hitler. Frankly, I would not even listen to anyone seriously that came and talked about such a thing."

As the only Republican candidate who took that advice seriously and opposed the war in Iraq, let's give Ron Paul a chance.

I've been thinking for awhile: even though I'm no longer a believer in political parties, I cannot help but think that if the Republican party does not steer toward the direction that Ron Paul represents, it will no longer be able to claim to be a party of principle after this next presidential election. Unfortunately I'm seeing most, if not all, of the party leadership putting their support behind the usual "contenders" of shallow character.

It's like this: the Republicans must decide that they either want reality, or illusion. It's time for them to take the proverbial red pill and put their money where their mouth is.

And if most people in the GOP seriously believe that Fred Thompson is going to be anything better than George W. Bush, then that party can kiss whatever respect they still have goodbye. It's almost gone anyway, after the fiasco of our border situation.