Politics & Power Quote by Ron Paul

Ron Paul is doing two things at once here: laundering a contemporary agenda through history, and tightening the rhetorical screws on his favorite enemy, the bipartisan “internationalist” elite. By invoking Woodrow Wilson, Paul reaches for a ready-made villain in American conservative memory - the academic moralist who pulled the U.S. toward Europe, bureaucracies, and crusades. The phrase “world government” is the tell. It’s a loaded escalation, not a neutral description of the League of Nations. Wilson argued for collective security; Paul recasts that as sovereignty’s slippery slope.

The intent is less to litigate 1919 than to frame modern institutions - the UN, NATO, trade bodies, even the EU as a vibe - as Wilsonian continuations. Once you accept that lineage, you don’t have to debate each institution on its merits. You can reject them all as one long project of centralized control. That’s why “early United Nations” functions as a rhetorical bridge: it compresses decades of policy and context into a single ominous through-line.

Then comes the partisan twist: “it was the conservatives, Republicans.” Historically, the League’s defeat was messier than ideology; there were internationalists and isolationists in both parties, plus personal feuds and constitutional anxiety about entangling commitments. Paul flattens that complexity into a morality play where “conservatives” are cast as the last guardians of independence. Subtext: today’s Republicans who tolerate intervention or global governance aren’t heirs of Taft-era restraint; they’re defectors. This is Paul using Wilson as a mirror, daring the right to recognize itself - and to stop compromising.