Comment by llambda

It's interesting to think about consistency as something that is necessarily valued. I think the naive rationale goes something like this, "Well a politician should be consistent because they must represent the will of the constituency which elected them, thereby enfranchising those people and validating the institution of democracy." However, that said, consistency can be a burden. Imagine this applied to the startup world. I shudder to think of a founder who is unwavering in their convictions about their business model, i.e. wholly uncompromising. Today things like lean are popular methods that advocate quick iteration as your data changes, nearly the opposite of holding one and only one consistent position. But being dynamic and changing your product as new data are available is arguably a key strategy to avoiding waste and more importantly, producing something people actually want. I suppose then you could argue it really isn't the same as someone like Paul who is advocating for constitutional consistency. But on the other hand the constitution was written over three hundred years ago, although I think it's paramount to protect the rights as allotted in the Bill of Rights I don't necessarily think that the constitution insomuch as it exists as a legally-binding document, needs to be adhered to without the consideration that iteration may need to be made on the intent of the original authors with respect to the ever-changing world. That is to say that the document was written with a certain intent, so long as we respect that essence we should be able to work within that as a framework that isn't wholly limiting to the literal wording; in fact the constitution has already been amended, if that's what it takes to convince purists then maybe that's what should happen. Ron Paul is saying, quite literally, that he wants to limit the govt to do nothing but what is legally provisioned in the constitution, i.e. most federal programs should be stopped as they are "illegal".