Pieces of Myself

• Ron Paul was the only 2008 Republican presidential candidate to have voted against the Iraq War Resolution during 2002. 
• Advocates withdrawal from the United Nations, and from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, for reasons of maintaining strong national sovereignty.
• He endorses free trade, rejecting membership in the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the World Trade Organization as “managed trade”. 
• He endorses increased border security and opposes welfare for illegal aliens, birthright citizenship and amnesty; he voted for the Secure Fence Act of 2006. 
• He voted for the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists in response to the September 11 attacks, but suggested war alternatives such as authorizing the president to grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal targeting specific terrorists.
• An opponent of the Iraq War and potential war with Iran, he has also criticized neoconservatism and U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, arguing that both inadvertently cause terrorist reprisals against Americans. 
• Paul has stated that “Israel is our close friend” and that it is not the place of the United States to “dictate how Israel runs her affairs”. 
• Paul is a proponent of Austrian school economics; he has authored six books on the subject, and displays pictures of Austrian school economists Friedrich Hayek, Murray Rothbard, and Ludwig von Mises (as well as of Grover Cleveland) on his office wall. 
• He regularly votes against almost all proposals for new government spending, initiatives, or taxes; he cast two thirds of all the lone negative votes in the House during a 1995–1997 period.  
• He has pledged never to raise taxes and states he has never voted to approve a budget deficit. 
• Paul believes that the country could abolish the individual income tax by scaling back federal spending to its fiscal year 2000 levels; financing government operations would be primarily by excise taxes and non-protectionist tariffs.
• He endorses eliminating most federal government agencies, terming them unnecessary bureaucracies. Paul has a consistent record as an inflation hawk, having warned of the threat of hyperinflation as far back as 1981. 
• Also believes the longterm decrease of the U.S. dollar’s purchasing power by inflation is attributable to its lack of any commodity backing. However, Paul does not endorse a “return” to a gold standard, as the U.S. government has established during the past, but instead prefers to eliminate legal tender laws and to remove the sales tax on gold and silver, so that the market may freely decide what type of monetary standard(s) there shall be.
• He also advocates gradual elimination of the Federal Reserve System.
• Paul endorses constitutional rights, such as the right to keep and bear arms, and habeas corpus for political detainees. 
• He opposes the Patriot Act, federal use of torture, presidential autonomy, a national identification card, warrant-less domestic surveillance, and the draft. 
• Citing the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, Paul advocates states’ rights to decide how to regulate social matters not cited directly by the Constitution. 
• Paul terms himself “strongly pro-life”, ”an unshakable foe of abortion”, and believes regulation or ban on medical decisions about maternal or fetal health is “best handled at the state level”. He says his years as an obstetrician led him to believe life begins at conception; his abortion-related legislation, like the Sanctity of Life Act, is intended to negate Roe v. Wade and to get “the federal government completely out of the business of regulating state matters.”
• Paul also believes that the notion of the separation of church and state is currently misused by the court system: “In case after case, the Supreme Court has used the infamous ‘separation of church and state’ metaphor to uphold court decisions that allow the federal government to intrude upon and deprive citizens of their religious liberty.”
• He opposes federal regulation of the death penalty (although he opposes capital punishment), of education, and of marriage, and endorses revising the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy to concern mainly disruptive sexual behavior (whether heterosexual or homosexual). 
• As a free-market environmentalist, he asserts private property rights in relation to environmental protection and pollution prevention. 
• He also opposes the federal War on Drugs and believes the states should decide whether to regulate or deregulate drugs such as medical marijuana.
• Paul pushes to eliminate federal involvement with and management of health care, which he argues would allow prices to decrease due to the fundamental dynamics of a free market. 
• He is an outspoken proponent for increased ballot access for 3rd party candidates and numerous election law reforms which he believes would allow more voter control.
• Referring to the federal government, Ron Paul has also stated that “The government shouldn’t be in the medical business.” He is also opposed to federal government influenza inoculation programs.
• Paul was critical of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, arguing that it sanctioned federal interference in the labor market and did not improve race relations. He once remarked: “The Civil Rights Act of 1964 not only violated the Constitution and reduced individual liberty; it also failed to achieve its stated goals of promoting racial harmony and a color-blind society”.
• On April 15, 2011, Paul was one of four Republican members of Congress to vote against “The Path to Prosperity”.

This information is taken from his main Wikipedia article. To get more in depth information about his stance on political issues, please visit the Wikipedia page for them here. 

Just as with any political figure, I really hope people understand what Ron Paul stands for, and are not just blindly following him because “he will legalize pot” and end the Patriot Act. He is still a very strong conservative, and I just hope that people don’t think he’s some liberal hippy. 

Every election is important, and while it may seem daunting, I hope that people will inform themselves on what every presidential candidate before going to the polls. 

Personally, I will not vote for him, mainly because he is anti-abortion, against universal health care, and against federal financial aid for higher education, but you may feel differently. Just know what all he stands for before you make your own decision.