I agree with most of your assessment. The exceptions are the isolationism, of course, and your assumption that Paul wants a return to a pastoral America. Paul’s Congressional website is a good source for information on his system of belief. He writes a regular column there on the subject.
The charge of isolationism is simply a hyperbolic reaction to his positions opposing adventurism and nation-building. Paul has stated on numerous occasions that we should act to protect our allies. The fact that he offered a declaration of war and letters of marque and reprisal against the Taliban and Afghanistan following 9/11 is sufficient evidence by itself that he is no isolationist. Paul’s foreign policy positions are classically conservative and Republican. The rise of the neocons within the GOP has simply eradicated them. Paul seeks to reinstate them. No more, no less.
By insisting on limiting Congressional and executive power to those explicit in the Constitution, Paul in no way seeks to return us to a bucolic and pastoral society. Once again, that is a hyperbolic characterization of his positions. There is nothing that says the return of Federalism and devolving power to the states must be accompanied by an agricultural renaissance. Obviously, with corporations operating nationally and globally, the regulation of interstate commerce by the federal government would be far greater than in Hamilton’s or Lincoln’s day. However, simply limiting that regulation to original intent does not necessitate the dissolution of corporate America.
I'm pleased he did this. I covered much of the same territory in Fighting Under World War II Rules. Even before the neocons, we were constitutionally sloppy in the instruments we used to fight a war.
Obviously, with corporations operating nationally and globally, the regulation of interstate commerce by the federal government would be far greater than in Hamilton’s or Lincoln’s day. However, simply limiting that regulation to original intent does not necessitate the dissolution of corporate America.
We get to the meat of the matter. Corporations were strictly regulated by the states before the Civil War. Following the Civil War, we were pretty much governed by Big Business in general and the railroads in particular.
With the states' rights position discredited by the Civil War, Jeffersonians turned to using that powerful federal government for popular ends, i.e. using Hamiltonian means to achieve Jeffersonian ends. The Progressives, who branched off from northeastern and midwestern Republicanism in the 1870's, finally achieved power under Theodore Roosevelt in 1901, and then Franklin Roosevelt built on that to define a whole new paradigm of democratic socialism. FDR's paradigm was to use government as the tool of the people's will to control the forces of the market.
This raises the question of a power vacuum. Should the federal government retreat to the powers granted by the Constitution -- and only those powers -- then who gains control? In a global marketplace, the states are going to find themselves fairly powerless in regulating corporations. One would probably end up with some form of corporate fascism, sometimes referred to humorously as "Proctor and Gamble with the death penalty".
This would indicate that even under a Paul administration, it would be necessary to utilize a loose construction of the Interstate Commerce Clause to prevent the undermining of democratic rule.
But that still begs certain questions:
These questions have bedeviled me for a long time. Returning to original intent sounds like a great idea, and it's certainly the purest definition of conservatism. But how do you get there from here, and how do you lead the American people to change their collective -- and "collective" is the right word! -- mindset?