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?
I am reasonably certain that Dr. Paul has no desire to toss us into chaos. Such an act would almost certainly result in anarchy or, as you say, corporate fascism. As well, the problem of getting Joe Average to give up his bread and circuses is daunting.
I am a firm believer in the counterweight theory of social and political action. You may have heard it from such notables as Rush Limbaugh, back in the days when he was actually conservative. Because the momentum in this country is strongly leftward, it will take an extreme rightward pull to even slow it down. I don’t believe Dr. Paul has any illusions that he could make even a sizable percentage of the progress toward the state of things he (and we) desire in the four or eight years he would occupy the Oval Office. However, I think he believes the attempt would at least change the color of the dialog.
We saw that even the marginal libertarianism of Ronald Reagan had an astounding effect on almost every aspect of life here. Unfortunately, the realities of politics forced him to introduce the factor that would almost completely negate everything he did: the Bush clan. Dr. Paul is more strongly libertarian and classically Republican than was Reagan. Reagan did not accomplish everything he wanted. I feel certain Dr. Paul knows that neither would he.
Every great change begins with a first step. A few specifics on your (very real and reasonable) issues:
I think Reagan made the case for privatizing and federalizing a number of functions co-opted by the national government. I think a number of reasonable plans have been laid out for weaning the public off the socialist security system. They range from declining pay-ins to tax moratoriums for selected members of the public, based on age. Bush’s silly “privatization” scheme was mere tinkering, much like his tax cuts. Convincing the public of this requires resistance to demagoguery and an ability to communicate the benefits.
Simply dropping into the gold standard would obviously cause pandemonium in the world’s markets. I believe Dr. Paul has called for the phasing out of the Federal Reserve, to be replaced by private banking entities that would allow a return to a commodity-based currency. Just getting the government out of the business of “controlling” the economy (a pipe dream and fairy tale) would make real progress toward a currency based on reality instead of theory.
Finally, I don’t think Dr. Paul is suggesting that we suddenly vanish from the rest of the world. Once again, a first step is to cease and desist in adventurism and nation-building. We need to get out of the UN and boot them out of the country. The organization will collapse under its own weight without us. We certainly need to stop providing financial aid to hostile countries. And we need to coerce our allies into becoming equal partners in their own defense, allowing us to pull back from our deep presence in a number of places. And we need to stop pretending we are the policemen of the world. We are not successfully performing the function anyway. We need to stop kidding ourselves that we can try to export our culture without any consequence or resentment.
Dr. Paul is the only candidate who is saying out loud that the car is going in the wrong direction. All the others simply want to flash the lights and honk the horn. Even if he has no chance to prevail in the primary, he has at least forced the babbling masses in the media to take him into account. I believe the public is paying attention and some of the “mainstream” candidates are in for a rude awakening. I am sure the Democrats are watching closely. Reagan taught them the folly of underestimating the power of ideas.