What You Might Not Know About Ron Paul,
and Why You Should Know It
by
Bov
January 8, 2008
Sitting on the slippery cool
back seat of my inlaws' car as we ease our way through the crawl of
holiday traffic in Middle Georgia, I see a sign in stencil spray-painted
red white and blue lettering, standing amongst the tall reeds and grasses
lining the front a strip mall that reads, "Ron Paul 2008, Save America."
We're in Ron Paul country here, in Middle Georgia. I have seen
no mention of any other candidate, only fading "W'04" stickers
here and there. And the other day it was announced that Paul has
raised more money than any other Republican candidate, a surprising
development for just about everyone.
Over Christmas, while wrapping
presents, we finally got a chance to watch Glen Beck's hour-long interview
with Paul and I could really see why average people get excited by him,
why he gives them hope -- aside from his willingness to talk about the
terrible mistakes and Orwellian draconian policies that the US is currently
engaged in, with shocking openness, he is also a man who has cared for
people as a doctor, and that compassion, on some level, shines through
in his simple sensible statements. Americans, used to Hollywood
style performances at campaign time, rolled out by the corporate media
machine like a prescription drug, complete with gushing orchestral music,
bringing us breathlessly to the finish, are caught off guard by the
surprising words he utters -lies, cover-ups, cheats - his lips tight
and his voice earnest, and our own feeling of childish excitement over
this breaking of all the corporate media rules.
What if?
That phrase pops into one's
head when we hear Paul open up the absurdities that we live with each
day, and knock them down before our eyes.
Wow, what if we really could?
What if we could bring everyone
stationed all over the world back home, those installed in foreign countries
to protect the corporate interests, to infiltrate, manipulate or clandestinely
"regime change" other governments?
What if we really could
. . . walk out of Iraq, end the phony racist `drug war,' massively
reform the IRS? It is a fantasy of many that we didn't even
know we had until Paul opened it up for us. Writer Bill Douglas,
in his essay advocating Paul for OpEdNews, focuses on a key issue that
resonates with just about everyone:
If you peel back the layers
of what is making life the most miserable for Americans and the world,
you find one over arching issue . . . "the military industrial complex."
The decline of the US standard of living, the collapse of the US dollar,
and the growing hatred of America worldwide are explained by that one
phrase.
Why a Liberal Progressive Can AND SHOULD Support Ron Paul
Bill Douglas, December, 24, 2007,
opednews.com
The positions that Paul is
taking, that no other corporate candidate has dared to, resonate so
deeply with Americans that many don't look much further into what
Paul is really about. When I talk to Paul supporters, I find that
indeed most are unaware of his voting record or much about his work
in Congress. They know that he has been a doctor and is a "Constitutionalist"
and is against the war, imperialism and for tax reform. Lance
Selfa, in his article for
socialistworker.org, "A maverick, but not
the good kind", tells us:
Paul has managed to
attract support from a wider layer of people, including those opposed
to the Iraq war. To them, Paul comes off as a straight shooter who speaks
unpopular truths against a two-party establishment that would rather
not listen.
Paul appears to want real fairness
and he shows that he is willing to be labeled a radical to get there,
which is touchingly American. Given that, Dr. Paul, I'm sure,
would agree that voters should look at the whole picture, not just single
issues. But when I actually tell Paul supporters some of the little
known facts about him -- perhaps his steadfast protection of oil industry
interests over the years in his voting record - they seem confused
and come back as though awakening from a sleep, rubbing their eyes,
"I hadn't heard that. . . . surprising. It seems like
a mistake, or something. Can you send me a link?"
Americans are desperate because
they have begun to realize the truth beyond even the financial crises
in full swing right now and worsening by the minute: that America is
indeed entering fascism - is practicing it -- but of the candidates
they can choose from, only Ron Paul will confirm even just this for
them, on NBC's Meet the Press.
"We're not moving toward
a Hitler-type fascism, but we're moving toward a softer fascism,"
he said. "Loss of civil liberties, corporations running the show,
big government in bed with big business."
When we hear him say these
statements, Ron Paul gets under our skin and we fall in love, at least
for a moment - its been so long since we heard truth uttered on corporate
media that we swoon. Many have been waiting for 8 years or more
for someone besides Michael Moore and Ralph Nader to say something -
anything -- to make sense with reality. Paul tells us:
. . . The federal government
. . . overrules state laws where state laws permit medicinal marijuana
for people dying of cancer. The federal government goes in and
arrests these people, put them in prison with mandatory, sometimes life
sentences. This war on drugs is totally out of control. . .
Prescription drugs are a greater danger than, than hard drugs.
MR. RUSSERT: But
you would decriminalize it?
REP. PAUL: I, I,
I would, at the federal level. I don't have control over the states.
Meet the Press' transcript:
Representative Ron Paul (R-TX), John Harwood and Chuck Todd
Tim Russert, Dec. 23, 2007,
msnbc.com
So what are the facts on Paul,
anyway? Russert brought up some. What is the price we must
pay for what seems like common sense? What are the votes, history
and positions behind the curtain that most don't know, haven't thought
about, or believe don't matter? Because the real question is
about what we are asking people to give up when we tell them that they
should vote for Ron Paul.
It seems there may be a very
high price to pay, but most have no idea of it. And with Paul's
positions shifting noticibly between interviews, it's hard to even
know where exactly he stands on areas like welfare and his constitutional
amendments. In this essay I'd like to look at what some are
saying about him, and mention what little I do know, and why these might
be important to know about.
A lot of how change is happening
in the US today is by duping people - lies, scams, cover-ups and media
manipulation - and some of us have had to become experts at un-duping,
or debunking, just to cope with reading the internet these days.
Now it's time to take a close look at Ron Paul. Because the
real costs of what we must give up in exchange for Paul's `radical'
ideas that can and do work, are being cast aside by most, stoked by
the "Revolution" Paul promises, the man who has protected the Texas
oil companies for most of his career in Congress.
CONTENTS
Property Rights, Human Rights
The Truth Candidate
The Bush Fantasy Candidate
The Internet Candidate
The Rorschach Campaign: Ink blots and Issues
The 'Dismantling of Big Government' But What Does it Really Mean?
The Constitutionalist
Ron Paul and the White Supremacists
Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime: The Price of Ron Paul
Conclusion: A Glimpse of Ron Paul America
Property
Rights, Human Rights
"Property rights are
the foundation of all rights in a free society."
-
Ron Paul, September, 2007
Wow, he said that?
Even if spoken in the context
of eminent domain, this was an eye-opener for me. To some, such
a quote describes a freedom from meddling and oppressive `big government,'
the spectre of `communism,' or worse, `socialism.
But to others, this quote has
an ominous ring, harkening back to a time when those without property
could not vote, or when feudal lords controlled all property (allowing
`the people' to rent), or even to our own times today when an average
American couple cannot possibly afford their own home in a large metropolitan
area where they might have a job, like San Francisco or New York City.
In short, the thing about property rights is that some of us own, and
some of us never will have the means to.
And the problem with this kind
of a statement is that it's the opposite of the compassionate country
doctor who cares for all . . . regardless. This is one of Paul's
key contradictions, discerning between those with property and those
with nothing, that some have the a piece of the foundation, others,
nothing. The dividing of America begins.
But some of us feel that the
foundation of all rights in a free society are not property rights,
but rather, human rights -- the right to live free of torture, racism,
and war, among other atrocities. Yet, these are the basic tenants
of the United Nations Charter, a document created by the body which
Paul considers run by "elites" and which he openly states we should
withdraw from. The US helped create the UN, and signed the UN
Charter in 194x, in a US city. Nations all over the world came
together for one reason, the same primary reason that people support
Paul and trust in his words: the desire for peace and not war, as a
means to resolve conflict.
Baseless fear-mongering about
the UN is classic Bush behavior but is also popularly repeated by Libertarians,
most of whom know virtually nothing about the history, functioning or
daily activities of UN whatsoever. It's been clear for decades
that it is the US which is spreading its own military around the world
and building hundreds of bases in every country, not the UN. Yet
Paul claims that now the UN will suddenly take this mandate away from
the US. David Swanson states:
[Ron Paul] would erode
international law far more swiftly than Bush, thereby endangering us
all in the long run. International law is what works against wars of
aggression.
Indeed, Ron Paul believes the
US Constitution will solve most of our problems. But the laws
and the Constitution are only as powerful as the Congressional representatives
who are tasked with upholding them. The US Congress has gone along
with the dangerous policy of granting Bush immunity from war crimes,
because all it takes is a Republican majority. Following the path
of actions taken during August and September of 2006 we see how easily
a US effort at a `war crimes act' is sidelined to protect the guilty:
Congress passed the War
Crimes Act of 1996 . . . [it] provides US courts with jurisdiction "to
convict any foreigner who commits a war crime against an American, or
any American who commits a war crime at all." . . . for the
first time, US civilians -- including intelligence officers, contractors,
and government officials -- could be criminally prosecuted for ordering
war crimes. . . . Now, the recent US Supreme Court decision of Hamdan
v. Rumsfeld opens the door for President Bush and Attorney General Gonzales
to be prosecuted under the US War Crimes Act.
Bush Seeks Retroactive Immunity From US War Crimes Prosecution
Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse, August 3, 2006,
dailykos.com
The Washington Post recently
reported that the Bush administration is quietly circulating draft legislation
to eliminate crucial parts of the War Crimes Act. . . . the Administration
plans to slip it through Congress this fall while there still is a guaranteed
Republican majority.
Senate Vote Advances President's Effort to Kill War Crimes Act
Jeremy Brecher & Brendan Smith, September 22, 2006,
thenation.com
Buried in the 94 pages
of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 . . . the Bush Administration
tacitly admits it has committed war crimes. The Military Commissions
Act of 2006 is retroactive. It shall "take effect as of November
26, 1997, as if enacted [on that date]." Nothing the Bush
Administration has done can be called into question.
How George Bush Admitted His War Crimes
Richard W. Behan, September 30, 2006,
CommonDreams.org
While the Bush Administration
was, not surprisingly, able to secure it's own immunity from criminal
prosecution within the US, what is the relevance, then, of the International
Criminal Court for the Bush Administration? In 2002, before the
invasion of Iraq, the Bush Administration sought "a blanket exemption
of all US citizens" from the United Nation's International Criminal
Court in the Hague:
With the Bush administration
gearing up for a "preemptive" war against Iraq, Washington this
week dispatched a senior US diplomat, Marisa Lino, to Europe to demand
that the governments of the European Union (EU) agree to a blanket exemption
of all US citizens from the jurisdiction of the newly formed International
Criminal Court.
US demands total impunity on war crimes
Bill Vann, October 12, 2002,
wsws.org
By 2003, those demands escalated
into actions to force compliance:
In a further bid to place
US officials and military personnel beyond the reach of war crimes prosecution,
the Bush administration cut off military aid to about 35 countries that
failed to meet a June 30 deadline for signing bilateral immunity agreements.
. . At least 90 have reportedly resisted the US blackmail effort.
US retaliates over war crime immunity demand
Bill Vann, July 5, 2003,
wsws.org
Although the Bush Administration
won the exemption, because it contained the requirement for a renewal,
within just one year the exposed atrocities of the Iraq war had destroyed
any possibility for such a renewal, so the exemption was short-lived:
Facing global opposition
fueled by the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal, Washington has dropped a
contentious UN resolution that sought to renew an exemption shielding
US troops from international prosecution for war crimes. The decision
followed an intervention by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who urged
Security Council members to oppose the resolution.
Annan Victory as U.S. Drops War Crimes Exemption Demand
June 24, 2004,
Scotsman.com
But Ron Paul has
supported barring
the International Criminal Court from having jurisdiction over the U.S.
military.
Unlike much of the rest of the world, Paul sees the International Criminal
Court as an affront to US freedom. Yet the ability of a renegade
US executive branch to protect itself from it's own laws is already
clear. Under a Ron Paul America, the rest of the world would be
left with no means to limit a rogue US Administration, meaning the only
recourses for desperate nations or populations would be military or
other tactical responses.
So we have to ask ourselves,
what if the decision to grant war crimes immunity had been left up to
the US Congress and not the world court of UN?
The United Nations is an extremely
complex and bureaucratic institution, to be sure, and reforms are urgently
needed. But most Americans are completely ignorant about the UN.
Most Americans are not aware that while the campaigns of most US Congressmembers
are, essentially, powerfully manipulated by the Israel lobbying group,
AIPAC (from 1978 - 2004 AIPAC donated over $39 million to members
of Congress), in contrast, the United Nations has been the primary international
public body in the world unafraid to treat Israel the same as the rest
of the world, and to regularly condemn it's actions.
The UN is far more immune from
easy corporate manipulation of our representatives and UN votes
show their defiance: From 1967 to 1989, the UN Security Council passed
88 out of 131 resolutions dealing with the Arab-Israeli conflict which
either criticized or opposed the actions of Israel. Similarly,
the UN General Assembly passed 429 resolutions against Israel during
the same time frame. Yet the US has used its veto power in the
Security Council to prevent such resolutions from passing. And
the UN Convention Against Racism in South Africa in 2001 proclaimed
- but was later forced to remove - the proposal that caused the
US and Israel to walk out: that Zionism is racism.
An important body of the UN
is the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) (http://www.iaea.org
).
This is the body that inspects nations for nuclear weapons.
But Ron Paul thinks our dues are wasted on such an agency as the UN.
Here's what he said in a 2007 speech:
We are still paying far
beyond our fair share at the United Nations. We get stuck with responsibility,
and the financing, and the burden, and the men lost, all too often.
I think the thing we should be concerned about from the United Nations,
(the damage that is done to us, and the potential damage that is likely
to come), the greatest threat is that we have over these years been
willing to turn over to the United Nations much of the control of our
foreign policy and when we go to war. And that has to be changed.
Ron Paul, "Brushfires of Freedom" speech, September 2007
Ron Paul, The United Nations, and War
Allen Holm, December 13,
theconservativecvoice.com
So how much are we paying to
help the UN function and do things like bring aid to Darfur or to provide
an international framework for scientists to interact during a global crisis like
the SARS epidemic
that threatened to grow into a pandemic but was stopped in time -
just how much are we talking about here?
Fact: US dues to the UN currently amount to $1.96B.
Fact: the Pentagon budget in 2008 was $469B
Is preventing world nuclear
war and global pandemics worth $2B? Or should we end our involvement
if Africa isn't paying their fair share?
Given a potential withdrawal
of the US from the UN and the IAEA that Paul would favor, the subsequent
isolation of the US and the likely escalation of worldwide nuclear tensions,
who would take on the important task of inspecting the world's nuclear
facilities? Would nations allow private agents of the US to inspect
their facilities for nuclear weapons? Perhaps the UN is expected
to become a privatized corporation after the dues and participation
are revoked. Despite being framed as a "peace candidate",
Ron Paul doesn't seem interested in the relevance of independent nonprofit
world bodies tasked with resolving world conflicts through dialog and
democracy.
This isn't rocket science.
This is about our future. Without any international bodies to
meditate between the world's nations we are facing potential nuclear
war.
Similarly, the International
Criminal Court is the only means we have for a civil and just response
to war crimes around the world as the US descends into fascism.
It wasn't the US Congress that kept Bush out of Iraq for precious
weeks before the bombing started, it was the UN. Bush was kept
out of Iraq by the UN longer than anyone else in the world could have.
Those few months may well be what allowed the insurgency to get a running
start and for innocents to flee with their lives. Today, because
of the massive sacrifices made by the Iraq insurgency, Bush Administration
plans have been muddled and exposed. But according to Ron Paul:
Our anticipated war in
Iraq has been condemned by many around the world for the worst of all
reasons: namely, that America is acting without United Nations approval.
The obvious implication is that an invasion of Iraq is illegitimate
without such approval, but magically becomes legitimate when UN bureaucrats
grant their blessing. . . . The administration deserves some credit
for asserting that we will go to war unilaterally if necessary, without
UN authorization.
Time to Renounce the United Nations?
Ron Paul, March 20, 2003,
lewrockwell.com
The real problem is not the
rational the UN `bureaucrats' engage in to try to stop the war,
it is the horror of the US war machine itself, and those who run it.
With the UN International Criminal Court, there is a slim chance that
the rest of the world will, ultimately, not let the Bush Administration
off the hook, even if the US Congress does. And those types of
checks and balances may be the only sorts of limitations on the plans
of those in power - the risk of going down in history with the label
"war criminal" affixed to their names. The legitimacy and
approval sought by a nation to a world body such as the UN is not an
"affront" to sovereignty, but rather is the most powerful yet non-violent
means known in history to keep imperialist tyrants in check.
The Truth
Candidate
"I think [the role of
the US government in 9/11 was] indirectly out of ineptness rather than
participating in it, planning it or allowing it to happen."
-
Ron Paul, Interview with Steve McGill, Oct. 2007
Ron Paul supporters and Libertarians
seized upon the 9/11 Truth Movement as a vehicle to promote Paul aggressively
early on in his campaign, primarily through two high-profile venues
which aggressively promoted Paul to activists - wearechange.org and
radio host Alex Jones. By the Sixth Anniversary of the attacks,
at most 9/11 events, on many 9/11 websites, and via weekly if not daily
emails, activists were hammered with the soundbyte that Ron Paul is
the "truth candidate" who believes that 9/11 was "an inside job."
But discerning exactly what
Ron Paul did and does believe has been another story.
In mid-2007, Student Scholars
For 9/11 Truth interviewed Ron
Paul and recorded
his promise to talk to Dennis Kucinich about setting up a new independent
investigative body to look into 9/11. The suggestion has been
that 9/11 activists supported Paul (en masse, apparently) because he
cares about the truth and would hold a real investigation into the events
of that day. Here's a segment of a typical Paul &
9/11 truth email I get:
Presidential candidate
Ron Paul and his millions of supporters are now being branded "terrorists"...
Believe 9/11 was an inside job? You're a terrorist ("extreme belief
system")... Opposed to the "wars of liberation" in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Of course you're a terrorist ("providing comfort to the enemy")...
This email you're reading? I'll likely soon be branded a "terrorist"
for sending it ("fomenting dissent").
Another video in which Ron
Paul was questioned about his views on 9/11 showed that Paul did seem
to believe that a "cover-up" occurred, but a cover-up of what?
It isn't clear. Although the original post and several of the
comments suggest that Paul is the best option to expose the truths of
the 9/11 attacks, later comments don't agree, and expose what will
arise more clearly later on:
He basically said that
the cover up was inspired by guilt as a result of ineptitude or incompetence,
and in effect did not even answer the question about what he would do
as president. . . . Why would people be gushing over this?
I watched him for over
an hour on C-SPAN last month and he never uttered a single word about
it. He doesn't bring it up in debates. He isn't pressing for any action
in the House of Representatives. Like all Libertarian style candidates,
Paul is good on some things and terrible on others. But can we honestly
say he is a "hero for 9/11 truth"?
EXACTLY..
RL McGee on Wed, 06/20/2007
- 4:09pm
So Ron Paul admits there's
a cover up of... ineptitude. Not of murder, insurance fraud or any of
the other crimes we are convinced were committed. Just ineptitude. .
. . there's not a word about looking into the real cause of death for
all those innocent people.
Pretty soon this blogger thread
devolves into a debate over Kucinich vs Ron Paul, and in the crude and
aggressive form we see all too often from Ron Paul supporters, statements
are made about Kucinich which prompt this response:
How is the anti-corporate,
anti-NAFTA Dennis Kucinich a "fascist, NWO shilling whore"?
At least make your insults logical. . . .
In October of 2007 a video
from an interview of Paul by Steve Gill was posted to YouTube and included
Paul's explicit description of what he said he believed regarding
the "conspiracy stuff":
STEVE GILL: I've seen videotapes
and listened to audio where you deny any willingness to embrace the
9/11 conspiracy stuff. A lot of your supporters do seem to embrace the
whole 9/11 conspiracy that the towers were brought down by the Bush
administration. Address that. Do you think the American government,
the U.S. government, had anything to do with bringing those towers down
either directly or allowing it to happen?
RON PAUL: I think indirectly
out of ineptness rather than participating in it, planning it or allowing
it to happen. I see it's ineptness - that's why I think the investigations
are always coverup of the inefficiency of government.
Ron Paul says 9/11 was ineptness and NOT "an Inside Job"
Representativepress, October 7, 2007,
youtube.com
But it was Glenn Beck, in December
of 2007, another right-wing Libertarian bent on exposing or destroying
the "dangerous" and "violent" 9/11 Truth Movement, finally exposed
the bottom line for the truth of 9/11 for Ron Paul, leaving his supporters
doing somersaults to try to clean up the mess:
BECK: . . . But may
I just run through these 9/11 conspiracies? No plane hit the Pentagon
on September 11th. Instead, it was a missile fired by elements from
inside the American state apparatus. Yes or no?
PAUL: It`s preposterous.
BECK: OK. The planes
that hit the World Trade Center towers were remotely controlled?
PAUL: I mean, this is just
bizarre.
BECK: OK.
PAUL: I`ve not even heard
of these challenges before.
BECK: Is there -- is there
any evidence or is there any doubt in your mind that the United States
government was not involved in the September 11th attacks? That we did
not bring down World Trade Center number seven?
PAUL: Well, yes, I absolutely
believe that is true. They did not. But the connection may be, and where
some people get carried away, is if you dig through those $40 billion
worth of intelligence-gathering apparatus that we had before 9/11, you
know, we dig up information and there was some ineptness. And
sometimes when you find ineptness in government, it`s easy to make this
giant leap over into conspiracy, and they do it on purpose. But, you
know, we had an FBI agent on 70 different occasions reported that these
individuals were flying airplanes and not learning how to land them.
And he was totally ignored.
BECK: Right.
PAUL: I consider this ineptness
on government, not a conspiracy that, oh, yes, we know about it, we
can`t wait until the towers come down. No, I don`t believe that at all.
I think -- I don`t even think I should have to answer questions like
that.
Transcript: Honest Questions with Ron Paul
Glenn Beck, Aired December
18, 2007,
cnn.com
At first glance one gets the
idea that Paul is doing what he's supposed to do for Glen Beck, who
claims to have had his life threatened by 9/11 truth activists and who
clearly wants them taken down, since apparently questioning the official
version of events is blasphemy.
But a moment later one realizes
the many many answers Paul could have given which would actually have
been both truthful and acceptable leaving no basis for "conspiracy".
He could have pointed out,
Well Glen, as you may
or may not know, the families of the victims of the 9/11 attacks have
only had about 1/3 of all of their questions answered during the 9/11
Commission Hearings. They've made a couple of films about this.
He could have even added,
as many do who want to remain in their present job do,
Now I'm no conspiracy
theorist, to be sure, but . . .
Except, he did not.
In fact, Paul's `9/11 Truth
Revolution' opportunity just fizzled in an instant.
Instead, and with much worse
consequences, Paul insisted that the "conspiracies" are simply a
misplaced response to our government's "ineptness." This
response sinks the truth of the 9/11 attacks for millions of people
around the world, and instead, works to build Paul's theme of government
ineptitude in all matters as confirmation for the basis for his own
primary position against "Big Government"
The Paul supporters start their
gymnastics on the 9/11 forums, mopping at the mess as fast as they can
with responses like these:
I have two friends, one
of whom is a legislative assistant in RP's congressional office, and
anther who is a former congressional staffer for RP. Both have confirmed
to me that RP is aware that 9/11 was an inside job. We have to wait
until the republican primaries are over for him to start speaking out
on this.
Galileo
on Thu, 12/20/2007 - 2:48pm.
I can't totally withdraw
from Vietnam right now. If I did I would be branded as a communist appeaser.
But I can do it after I'm re-elected - so we better make damn sure that
I AM re-elected." JFK said this to confidant Wayne Morse
(or Kenneth O' Donnell, can't remeber which one} shortly before they
gunned him down. Politicians sometimes have to keep their true opinions
and plans to themselve's if they want to get elected.
Ghandi also had a good
sense of timing, and I think Ron Paul does too. The election is still
11 months away.
Ghandi? Amazing. It appears
that the Paul "pushers" on the internet will do anything to make
Paul `right' for the crowd. But one poster, although no Einstein
himself, slices through the muck they are creating, like knife through
butter:
WOW! you RP guys are over
the damn top! Did you not just watch that video? He does not support
9/11 truth . PERIOD! I find it laughable to read your comments that
he is lieing now, and if we only ELECT him, he will wake up and speak
the truth? That is'nt even a democratic rational!!! lie his way into
office., and you support that?!? Shame! People that support a
guy in the hopes that he will majically flip possions AFTER you elect
him are friggin' nuts! Just admit that you are far right wing idealogs
and that has absolutly nothing to do with 9/11 truth.
It's hard to top that.
The Bush
Fantasy Candidate
The fury that many have at
the Bush Administration can instill a blind rage, which is understandable,
but which requires a certain grabbing by the shoulders and a shaking
of someone back into awareness to bring them out of that trance and
show them why Ron Paul is not going to be the savior after all.
This is a painful reality to face.
This fury crosses party lines,
racial boundaries, and even class boundaries as our country sinks ever
more deeply into a fascist state. With the increasing awareness
of the dire position of the US, it's no wonder we are seeing voters
reacting, not researching, and generally acting out of a fear and anger.
Most don't realize that Ron
Paul defends Bush:
I'm talking the people
who have hijacked our foreign policy, the people who took George Bush's
foreign policy of a humble foreign policy and turned it into one of
nation-building which he complained about. . . . The president himself
has changed the policy. . . I liked the program he ran on. That's
what I defend. And--but all of a sudden--and it didn't change
after 9/11, it changed the first meeting of the Cabinet according to
Paul O'Neal. He says immediately it was on the table. `When,
when were we going to attack Iraq?'
Meet the Press' transcript:
Representative Ron Paul (R-TX), John Harwood and Chuck Todd
Tim Russert, Dec. 23, 2007,
msnbc.com
Many think Paul is the antidote
to Bush and forget that he is made of the same cloth. For example,
although Paul has voted against Bush Administration energy bills, he
essentially voted to protect the same oil interests that Bush does -
and which have kept us in the wars in the Middle East that Paul says
we should withdraw from -- even in violation of his own principles against
any government subsidies. Let's take a look at Ron Paul's
votes on energy and oil issues:
* Voted NO on criminalizing
oil cartels like OPEC. (May 2007)
* Voted NO on removing
oil & gas exploration subsidies. (Jan 2007)
* Voted NO on keeping moratorium
on drilling for oil offshore. (Jun 2006)
* Voted YES on scheduling
permitting for new oil refinieries. (Jun 2006)
* Voted NO on passage of
the Bush Administration national energy policy. (Jun 2004)
* Voted NO on implementing
Bush-Cheney national energy policy. (Nov 2003)
* Voted NO on raising CAFE
standards; incentives for alternative fuels. (Aug 2001)
* Voted NO on prohibiting
oil drilling & development in ANWR. (Aug 2001)
* Repeal the gas tax. (May
2001)
* Voted NO on starting
implementation of Kyoto Protocol. (Jun 2000)
* Replace coal & oil
with alternatives - strongly opposes . . .
So when we pull back the curtain
of "Revolution," we find that much of what Ron Paul is virtually
no different from what Bush, Reagan and Bush I were. Paul says
he sees himself as very different from Bush I & II and Reagan, even
though, as Tim Russert points out on Meet the Press, he uses their images
in his brochures to play both sides of the fence:
MR. RUSSERT: . . . If Reagan's
a failure, Bush 41 is a bum, and you didn't vote for Bush 41 -- 41's
a bum and 43 you didn't vote for -- and you resigned from the Republican
Party, why are you running as a Republican candidate for president?
REP. PAUL: Because
I represent what Republicanism used to be. I represent the group
that wanted to get rid of the Department of Education, that part of
the Republican Party that used to be non-interventionists overseas.
That was the tradition, the Robert/Taft wing of the party. There
was a time when the Republicans defended individual liberty and the
Constitution and decreased spending. So the radicals, the ones
who really don't belong in the Republican Party and why the Republican
Party is shrinking, why the base is so small, is because they don't
stand for these ideals any more. So I stand for the ideals of
the Republican Party. I've been elected 10 times as Republican.
I've been a Republican all my life except for that one year that I ran
as a Libertarian. But, no, I represent the Republican ideals,
I think, much more so that the individuals running for the party right
now.
Meet the Press' transcript:
Representative Ron Paul (R-TX), John Harwood and Chuck Todd
Tim Russert, Dec. 23, 2007,
msnbc.com
Paul's votes, in essence,
amount to isolationist policies in a world connected - from one corner
of the globe to the other - in real time via the internet, the world
economy, the US debt and many other factors. Today, while an isolationist
policy militarily sounds good, such a policy has potentially lethal
ramifications in other sectors where the US currently participates widely
and interactively on the world stage.
And a worse potential problem
is that all it would take to turn Ron Paul into Bush-lite is one `terrorist'
bombing incident in the US. Although Ron Paul has voted according
to his own principles, he has not made revolutionary efforts of the
kind we are hearing of to bring about change, just as he shows how Bush
could not because he was "hijacked". Lance Selfa reminds us
of the conservative underpinnings that both Bush and Paul share:
Paul's positions, no
matter how left-sounding, flow from a fairly (although not totally)
consistent conservative worldview. . . Those who are impressed by Paul[`s
antiwar stance], should recall that Milton Friedman, the archconservative
economist whose free-market ideology has devastated millions of lives,
also opposed the military draft."
Milton Friedman is the bad
guy that Naomi Klein has recently educated us all about in her new best-seller,
the Shock Doctrine, which exposes the historical role of Friedman's
policies set at the heart of the Bush Administration and NeoCon agenda
of "shock and awe" -- using catastrophes, torture and the ensuing
confusion on both nations and individuals to ram through economic policies
which would otherwise never be accepted by the people, with devastating
consequences. The same policies that Paul rails against -- the
Patriot Act, the surveillance, the secret prisons, the right of habeus
corpus -- have been put in place by those following the Friedman doctrine.
Here's what Ron Paul wrote
about Milton Friedman upon his death in 2006:
The death of economist
Milton Friedman last week at the age of 94 marks a great loss for advocates
of freedom everywhere. He was perhaps the most successful free-market
economist of the 20th century, in terms of his real-world impact on
politics and policy. Many modern politicians, including Ronald Reagan,
considered him a major influence in their careers. Milton Friedman
was a strong advocate of economic liberty who opposed government intervention
in both the purely economic and broader social spheres of our society.
He believed not only in laissez-faire capitalism, but also the larger
cause of individual liberty in the political sense. I was proud
to know Dr. Friedman for many decades, and considered him a friend.
And posted on the "Daily
Paul" website, one will see comments like this:
http://video.google.com
Milton Friedman with a
beautiful refutation of the philosophy of socialism. This is a must
watch video!
Weekend Watching: Milton Friedman's tour de force attack on socialism
Toban, November 11, 2007,
dailypaul.com
But here's what a comment
on the same page, citing Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine: The
Rise of Disaster Capitalism, tells us about Friedman:
Milton Freidman posthumously
brought us the Iraq debacle via his acolytes Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and
the rest of the NeoCon cabal. Yes, they were his students and Iraq was
the perfect laboratory for laissez-faire capitalism. It turned into
a nightmare because utopia is not achievable on earth-especially administered
by brutal ideologues like Bush and the NeoCons. . . . But I am beginning
to wonder, just how na‹ve is the Ron Paul movement?
Here's what Naomi Klein says
in an interview:
NK: I would argue
that [Austrian economist Friedrich] Hayek and [University of Chicago
economist Milton] Friedman shared this dream of the pure system. These
are brilliant mathematicians, in many cases, so it looks perfect in
their modeling. But I think anyone who falls in love with a system is
dangerous, because the world doesn't comply and then you get angry at
the world.
Q: So you have these
economists advocating for this pure form of capitalism -- what is the
attraction of disasters to these people?
NK: Well, disasters
are moments where people are blasted out of the way, where they are
in a state of shock, whether they're scattered -- as after a hurricane
hits in New Orleans -- or just picking up the pieces after having been
bombed, or their entire world view has just been shattered -- as after
Sept. 11. These are malleable political moments. And there is an awareness
that disasters create these opportunities, so you have a whole movement
-- much of it standing at the ready within the think-tank infrastructure.
I think of these think tanks as sort of idea-warmers -- they keep the
ideas ready for when the disaster hits. Milton Friedman said that only
a crisis, real or perceived, produces real change, and when that crisis
hits, the change that occurs depends on the ideas that are lying around.
Interview with Naomi Klein
Kenneth Whyte , September
10, 2007,
Macleans.ca
Klein, in an interview on
Democracy Now, also says:
AMY GOODMAN: Naomi, as
we wrap up this hour, what were you most shocked by in researching the
shock doctrine?
NAOMI KLEIN: I was shocked
that there is this cache of literature out there, which I didn't know
existed, where the economists admit it. You know, and this is what I
guess I'm most excited about in the book is how many quotes I have
from very high-level advocates of free-market economics, everyone from
Milton Friedman to John Williamson, who's the man who coined the phrase
"the Washington Consensus," admitting amongst themselves, not publicly,
but amongst themselves, in sort of technocratic documents, that they
have never been able to push through a radical free-market makeover
in the absence of a large-scale crisis, i.e. the central myth of our
time that democracy and capitalism go hand in hand is known to be a
lie by the very people who are advancing it, and they will admit it
on the record.
The Shock Doctrine: Naomi
Klein on the Rise of Disaster Capitalism
Amy Goodman, September
17, 2007,
democracynow.org
So the claim that Friedman's
pure economic ideas were simply hijacked by the NeoCons for nefarious
intentions is exposed as false.
The Internet
Candidate
Flipping through a tiny local
paper in Middle Georgia named The Patriot, I scan it for `patriotic'
items -- as a Northeasterner the culture of the South fascinates me,
like I'm in another country -- yet I am disappointed to find nothing
special, just notices of local happenings, deaths, and church events.
But then, yes, I've found it -- a notice for a Ron Paul meet-up.
There is no other candidate mentioned around here, only Paul.
The Paul phenomenon here in
Middle Georgia is to be expected, but on the internet, something else
is going on. The vast majority of internet users are not likely
Libertarians, yet Paul, like Howard Dean, is the designated 2008 internet
candidate. A post by "Jim" at Irregulartimes.com, states:
How could that be? How
could Ron Paul's campaign stay up so high in Technorati's rankings
for so long, when no other candidate, even those with much more general
public support, have failed to rise to that level of online interest?
Ron Paul Is The Email Spam
Candidate for President
jclifford, November 1, 2007,
irregulartimes.com
But Sarah Lai Stirland, of Wired Magazine points out,
Ron Paul's campaign has
been promoted through the use of email spam, using techniques that are
at minimum harassing and dishonest, and are likely to be actually criminal."
Although Stirland acknowledges, "The Ron Paul for President campaign
is, so far, denying involvement in the email spam operation," she
concludes, "Online, it seems that Ron Paul's campaign has attracted
dishonest hackers who have such disrespect for voters that they're willing
to subject us to torrents of garbage clogging up our email accounts.
'Criminal' Botnet Stumps
for Ron Paul, Researchers Allege
Sarah Lai Stirland, October
31, 2007,
wired.com
I first encountered the phenomenon
of candidates who aren't who they appear to be with the campaign of
Howard Dean in 2004.
Writers with Counterpunch,
Josh Frank
and
Sean Donahue
, among others, were some of the first
to notice that Dean seemed to be playing games with his audiences.
Writers pointed out depending on what audience and what coast he was
on, Dean's positions were morphing. It wasn't flip-flopping.
It was about a careful and subtle orchestration of assuming revised
positions constantly. He played to the crowd. And he knew
how to play the internet game better than anyone before him. A
quote I liked to pass around from Dean was his statement which caught
the attention of progressives: "
I was against the
war, but I wasn't a protester."
I experienced the Deaniac machine
at work for myself one time on the Portland Indymedia website, just
prior to his appearance there, when I noticed that the sudden influx
of supportive comments about Dean had what amounted to a formula in
their structure. I called them on it and pretty quickly others
on the site noticed it as well.
There is something curious
going on with some of the Dean supporters coming to Portland Indymedia.
One has to wonder if all these Dean supporters are merely ordinary people
who spontaneously post here, or they an example of a what is called
an "Astroturf" operation -- an organized political operation
designed to create the image of a "grassroots" political movement.
Howard Dean was taken out of
the running in the same way anyone can be taken out, but it didn't
mean he was a candidate of the people, only that most people didn't
know the whole puzzle, and probably never would have until a few years
into a Dean Administration. It only meant that he wasn't, apparently,
the chosen one.
An earlier version of Dean's
strategy could be seen in the presidential campaign of Bill Clinton.
Clinton also assumed every different position depending on who needed
to hear it and what would play best. I remember sitting in a caf‚
in San Francisco and reading the SF Bay Guardian's article endorsing
Clinton, but also exposing his contradictions - even though that little
local free paper is strongly Democrat, even they could not avoid point
out the absurdities of this strategy.
Turning the fear and anger
of the nation against the Bush Administration into a powerful political
campaign to sweep up those who reject the corporate candidates takes
just a few key ingredients, such as an excellent internet campaign team,
a willingness to not reject any financial support (even if it comes
directly from David Duke), keeping charisma or hotbutton `Revolution'
ideas -- not the voting record -- located front and center, and playing
selectively to different audiences.
The Rorschach Campaign: Ink blots and Issues
Carla Marinucci, writing for
the San Francisco Chronicle, summarizes Paul's positions:
The former practicing obstetrician,
who has served in the House about 20 of the past 35 years, is vehemently
anti-abortion - voting against federal funding of abortion, stem cell
research and even family planning funding in U.S. foreign aid - and
strongly pro-gun rights. His views have gained him high ratings from
conservatives and groups such as the Christian Coalition and the National
Rifle Association. Paul also is seen as strongly anti-environmental
by groups such as the League of Conservation Voters, which gave him
just a 5 percent legislative rating on his voting record. But
Paul also appeals to progressives on a number of issues: He supports
repealing most federal drug laws, including those against medical marijuana,
is against the death penalty, vigorously opposes the war in Iraq and
is against the Patriot Act and free trade agreements such as NAFTA.
Indeed, some political analysts suggested he is the 2008 campaign's
political ink blot test - able to represent whatever voters see in him.
But a lot of bloggers and campaign
activists are trying to convince the Left that their one issue is worth
it. It often seems that Paul supporters see whatever they are
in need of seeing. The contradictions in Paul's positions are
related to his embrace of an abstract ideology jammed cookie-cutter
style onto the complex, diverse and multi-colored reality of world and
US issues today. Perhaps he is playing both sides of the fence,
but what emerges is a strangely-shaped constellation of views, a patchwork
of positions on the issues that often contradict each other or, from
time to time, are revealed for their cold hard truths:
Paul explained that he
is against wars because they only increase government power and he is
against every form of big government.
Colbert 'confused' by Republican candidate Ron Paul
David Edwards and Muriel
Kane, June 14, 2007,
Rawstory.com
He opposes occupying Iraq
because it involves massive government expense and power. That, and
not the million corpses, is his primary concern.
The benefit of assuming contradictory
positions, naturally, is support from a broad spectrum of voters . .
. but only as long as they never look closely at the whole picture,
or at least not until they've contributed to the campaign. This
type of support, based mainly on a narrow band of positions, each appealing
to different groups, suggests that Paul's support comes mainly from
what is perhaps the single most powerful issue of our time: the
lies of the Bush Administration. People fall into their different
categories on how they oppose Bush, and they find that one category
in Ron Paul, and seize on it. Only later do some wake up with
the hang-over of the whole picture.
Let's take a simple hot-button
issue that exposes one of Ron Paul's contradictions. Lance Selfa
writes:
So the `freedom' he
advocates is a society with no income taxes, little or no government
programs for the poor or disadvantaged, and no regulation of occupational
safety and health or food and drug standards. Interestingly, one
exception to his views is abortion.
A maverick, but not the good kind
Lance Selfa, October 12, 2007,
Socialist Worker
While Paul opposes `Big Government'
and wants it out of our lives, as David Swanson points out, he applies
a different standard when it comes to women. Swanson writes:
Women who value the right
to abortion would lose it under a Paul Administration. This is not speculation.
He openly says he wants to overturn Roe v. Wade. That's his principle
and he stands by it courageously and honestly, but most Americans disagree
with him.
But if most Americans don't agree, why is Paul for it?
How is this not government intervention?
Chris Schaffer, of sustainabledemocracy.org, says it is:
It should never be the
role of the government to force moral positions on citizens.
A Ron Paul advocate blogging
online about his perception of this contradiction, resolves it this
way:
The man is an OBGYN and
has witnessed a 2.5 month baby being placed into a bucket after an abortion.
He views it as an act of violence against an individual. I see the merits
of that argument. . . . seems like more conflict between my personal
views and reasons verses his . . . he is personally Pro-Life.
Such reasoning is typical of
how average people will try to `rearrange the map' when they discover
the inherent pitfalls of the candidate they have chosen. The same
position in a rival candidate would likely engender anger and rejection.
Tim Russert, on Meet the Press,
explained one of the classic Paul contradictions:
MR. RUSSERT: When
I looked at your record, you talked about big government and how opposed
you are to it, but you seem to have a different attitude about your
own congressional district. For example, "Congress decided
to send billions of dollars to victims of Hurricane Katrina. Guess
how Ron Paul voted. `Is bailing out people that chose to live
on the coastline a proper function of the federal government?' he asks.
And you said no. And yet, this: "Paul's current district
. . . draws a substantial amount of federal flood insurance payments."
For your own congressional district. This is the Houston Chronicle:
"Representative Ron Paul has long crusaded against a big central
government. But he also" "represented a congressional
district that's consistently among the top in Texas in its reliance
on dollars from Washington.
. . . .
REP. PAUL: They take
our money from us, and the Congress has the authority to appropriate,
not the executive branch. And I'm saying that I represent my people.
They have a request, it's like taking a tax credit, and I put it in--the
whole process is corrupt so that I vote against everything.
MR. RUSSERT: All
right, let me ask you this. But if...
REP. PAUL: I vote
against it, so I don't endorse the system.
MR. RUSSERT: But
when it passes overwhelmingly, you take the money back home.
REP. PAUL: I don't
take it. That's the system.
Meet the Press' transcript:
Representative Ron Paul
(R-TX), John Harwood and Chuck Todd
Tim Russert, Dec. 23, 2007,
msnbc.com
These positions mainly show
that Paul takes care of his own - those who vote for him -- and uses
the system in whatever way necessary to do that. One can extrapolate
whom `his own' would be as a president (i.e., the oil companies).
If Katrina had occurred in Paul's district, we can bet he would work
for funding after a disaster. But the families who survived Katrina
and those who must survive future environmental catastrophes should
note that under a Paul Administration, they can expect to simply `not
go home again.'
The
'Dismantling of Big Government' But What Does it Really Mean?
Think about what your
life might look like if no one could tell Walmart, or Halliburton, or
Microsoft, `No'. . . It should be obvious that this would probably
lead to a sort of wage-slavery that would leave us reflecting back on
today's capitalism as `the good ole days.'
Sherry Wolf, editor of the
International Socialist Review, writes in her essay on Paul:
At its core, the fetishism
of individualism that underlies libertarianism leads to the denial of
rights to the very people most radicals aim to champion . . . To advocate
for society to be organized on the basis of strict individualism, as
libertarians do, is to argue that everyone has the right to do whatever
he or she wants. . . . But what happens when the desires of one individual
infringe on the desires of another? Libertarians like Paul don't shy
away from the logical ramifications of their argument. "The dictatorial
power of a majority" he argues ought to be replaced by the unencumbered
power of individuals-in other words, the dictatorial power of a minority.
Similarly, Noam Chomsky discusses
Ron Paul's anti-"Big Government" stance:
Dismantling of big government'
sounds like a nice phrase. What does it mean? . . . Does it mean that
the economy should collapse, because basic R&D is typically publicly
funded -- like what we're now using, computers and the internet?
Should we eliminate roads, schools, public transportation, environmental
regulation? . . . Quite a few questions arise.
Noam Chomsky on Ron Paul
personman, December 2, 2007, znet sustainers forum, reposted at
anarchismtoday.org
Reporters interviewing Paul,
confused by how Paul's statements on his positions would impact the
reality of the US budget, repeatedly ask the same question, "But
how could you pay for anything without taxes?"
Paul replies that we had no such taxation before the early 1900s and
did just fine, and that if we bring home everyone from overseas we will
recoup hundreds of billions.
BECK: How do you change
the tax code? I mean, we`ve been saying -- every American knows this
doesn`t work. . . .
PAUL: Well, mine is to
get rid of the IRS but not replace it with anything by cutting a lot
of spending. Because we lived without an income tax before 1913. So
I`m not interested in the flat tax or the -- or the sales tax. You know?
Although anything would -- anything would be better.
BECK: Yes. Just what you`re
saying, I mean, you`re speaking -- I mean, you know, if we weren`t both
men, you know, I might have to French kiss you on the whole abolishing
the IRS thing. You had me at hello. You did. No, you did. So --
so you want to replace it with -- with a -- with some sort of a sales
tax?
PAUL: No, nothing.
BECK: Nothing. How...
PAUL: I want to replace
it with freedom. I want to replace it with freedom and less spending.
BECK: OK. But wait a minute.
Hang on just a second.
PAUL: But you`re right.
Yes, OK.
BECK: I mean, I love you.
Don`t get me wrong. How do we pay for the things we do have to pay for?
Transcript: Honest Questions with Ron Paul
Glenn Beck, Aired December 18, 2007,
cnn.com
But in the early 1900s, a world
apart from today's world, there were a lot of ugly realities that
we wouldn't probably want to return to -- old or disabled people were
taken care of at home by family or died harshly on the street.
Paul says we can afford to take care of those who could not take care
of themselves, and says he's looking out for the future of those on
medicare and social security now, rather then after the system has collapsed.
But we don't see the reality of these in Paul's past behavior except
for his `no' votes on everything. Here is one blogger's
effort at what such a libertarian reality would look like:
In other words, libertarians
seek the dissolution of all social welfare programs (Social Security,
Medicare, public education, welfare, etc.) based on the erroneous belief
that the market can and will supply every person with all of these benefits
more efficiently than the government can. Without Social Security,
for example, corporations would willingly provide retirement benefits
to all of their employees. Instead of welfare, private charities would
be able to provide support to those the economy leaves behind. While
these assumptions might show that libertarians have great faith in humanity,
they don't seem particularly realistic.
A look at Ron Paul's America:'Consistently wrong is still wrong'
Greg Wildermuth, November 11, 2007,
gonzagabulletin.com
Here's another viewpoint
from the standpoint of the potential environmental damage from the privatization
and anti-"Big Government" positions of Paul:
With half of the world's
wealth in the hands of only 2% of the population, it's big business
who will own the majority of land. The biggest polluters will simply
buy the land, air, and water they intend to pollute. Paul believes any
real environmental protection is unconstitutional and that polluting
is a right.
Ron Paul on the Environment
Manila Ryce, December 4, 2007,
jwharrison.com
Ultimately, the reality we
see is that Paul cares for his own - as exposed in recent news stories
about how Paul's own district has raked in more government money than
any other in Texas -- and the rest be damned. So one question
becomes, who will be Paul's "own," as president?
These positions amount to a
form of isolationism -- or "
libertarian isolationism" -- and it is in stark contrast
to the compassionate doctor and the man who wants to protect the poor,
elderly and disabled from the future disaster of the collapse of the
system. Paul doesn't explain how to "fix" the system --
keep those without anything alive -- mainly that we have to cut the
spending before the system collapses.
BECK: . . . How do
you finally say to people, "You know what? You don`t have a right
to health care. You don`t have a right to all of the things that we`ve
given"? Bloomberg just today is starting to pay people for
showing up to go to free school. How do you get off of that?
PAUL: . . . Well, I think
you just deny them the benefits. And we will be denying the benefits
when we run out of money and the system collapses. All I want to do
is make sure we start before we have the financial crisis . . . And
we have become an immoral nation, because we think that, if you transfer
wealth through the government force, that it`s legitimate, it`s an entitlement,
and they have a right to it. As long as we have that . .
. there`s no way we can solve our problem. But if you feed the
system and allow people to get these benefits and perpetuate the welfare
state, it never will reverse. So I stay start reversing it and start
cutting the spending.
Transcript: Honest Questions with Ron Paul
Glenn Beck, Aired December 18, 2007,
cnn.com
But if welfare is cut now or
cut later, what is the real difference? The assumption is that
welfare recipients are somehow better off if they know in advance they
will be cut off, and so somehow will stop being disabled, or stop having
a mental illness, or stop having a physical disorder, or stop producing
dependents. As long as Paul keeps the focus on the "when"
he'll cut welfare, not the how or what happens next, no one is asking
for the details.
The Constitutionalist
". . . the secularists
wage an ongoing war against religion, chipping away bit by bit at our
nation's Christian heritage. Christmas itself may soon be a casualty
of that war."
-- Ron Paul, Christmas in Secular America, 29 December 2003
Ron Paul is also best known
as being a Constitutionalist. His website states:
Dr. Paul never votes for
legislation unless the proposed measure is expressly authorized by the
Constitution.
Ron Paul 2008: Issue: Life and Liberty
Accessed December 28, 2007,
RonPaul2008.com
But in the same way that his
stance on abortion is opposite to his anti- "Big Government," stance,
Paul wants an amendment to put prayer in our schools, opposite to what
most would consider a "Constitutionalist" stance. Here's
another example in what Tim Russert brought up in his December `Meet
the Press' interview with Paul:
MR. RUSSERT: You
say you're a strict constructionist of the Constitution, and yet you
want to amend the Constitution to say that children born here should
not automatically be U.S. citizens.
REP. PAUL: Well,
amending the Constitution is constitutional. What's a--what's
the contradiction there?
MR. RUSSERT: So in
the Constitution as written, you want to amend?
REP. PAUL: Well,
that's constitutional, to do it. Besides, it was the 14th Amendment.
It wasn't in the original Constitution. And there's a, there's
a confusion on interpretation. In the early years, it was never
interpreted that way, and it's still confusing because people--individuals
are supposed to have birthright citizenship if they're under the jurisdiction
of the government. And somebody who illegally comes in this country
as a drug dealer, is he under the jurisdiction and their children deserve
citizenship? I think it's awfully, awfully confusing, and, and I, I--matter
of fact, I have a bill to change that as well as a Constitutional amendment
to clarify it.
Meet the Press' transcript:
Representative Ron Paul (R-TX), John Harwood and Chuck Todd
Tim Russert, Dec. 23, 2007,
msnbc.com
Defenders of Ron Paul respond
to these positions with the same formula response that Howard Dead supporters
did:
"He doesn't really
feel that way, he just has to say that."
"I'm not so concerned
about that, I'm only interested in his other positions."
"Paul has the right interpretation,
just read it."
But does he? Rather than
trying to read Ron Paul's mind or have faith that Paul's interpretation
is the only one that's right in the history of interpretations of
the Constitution, let's just look at some facts.
The Constitution is the first
document in the history of the world in which a nation was founded on
the separation of church and state. Most agree that this was no
mistake or casual aspect of the document, but rather, this was a founding
principle. Yet, here's a speech from December of 2003, that
Ron Paul gave in the House of Representatives, titled, `Christmas
in Secular America':
The notion of a rigid separation
between church and state has no basis in either the text of the Constitution
or the writings of our Founding Fathers. On the contrary, our Founders'
political views were strongly informed by their religious beliefs. Certainly
the drafters of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution,
both replete with references to God, would be aghast at the federal
government's hostility to religion. The establishment clause of the
First Amendment was simply intended to forbid the creation of an official
state church like the Church of England, not to drive religion out of
public life. The Founding Fathers envisioned a robustly Christian
yet religiously tolerant America, with churches serving as vital institutions
that would eclipse the state in importance. Throughout our nation's
history, churches have done what no government can ever do, namely teach
morality and civility. Moral and civil individuals are largely governed
by their own sense of right and wrong, and hence have little need for
external government. This is the real reason the collectivist Left hates
religion: Churches as institutions compete with the state for the people's
allegiance, and many devout people put their faith in God before their
faith in the state. Knowing this, the secularists wage an ongoing war
against religion, chipping away bit by bit at our nation's Christian
heritage. Christmas itself may soon be a casualty of that war.
Christmas in Secular America,
Ron Paul, December 29,
2003,
house.gov
But Brooke Allen, writing for
the Nation, says:
If we define a Christian
as a person who believes in the divinity of Jesus Christ, then it is
safe to say that some of the key Founding Fathers were not Christians
at all. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Tom Paine were deists--that
is, they believed in one Supreme Being but rejected revelation and all
the supernatural elements of the Christian Church; the word of the Creator,
they believed, could best be read in Nature. . . . George Washington
and James Madison also leaned toward deism, although neither took much
interest in religious matters. Madison believed that "religious
bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble
enterprize." He spoke of the "almost fifteen centuries"
during which Christianity had been on trial: "What have been its
fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy,
ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry,
and persecution."
Our Godless Constitution
Brooke Allen, February 3, 2005,
thenation.com
These quotes don't sound
like the founders would actually conform to Ron Paul's claim that
they would be "aghast at the federal government's hostility to religion."
In the essay, `Ron Paul vs. Freedom,' Ron Chusid summarizes the
positions that has taken on religion and the Constitution:
He has incorrectly claimed
that, `The notion of a rigid separation between church and state has
no basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writings of our
Founding Fathers.' He has also supported keeping `under God' in
the Pledge of Allegiance, has co-sponsored the school prayer amendment,
and supported keeping the Ten Commandments on a courthouse lawn. Paul
has both criticized secularism and claimed that the Founding Fathers
envisioned a Christian America.
Paul's positions are more
in keeping with the Religious Right than the statements of the Founders
themselves, and this seems inherently opposite to the Constitution.
This website summarizes the actual quotes of the Founders and states:
When the Founders wrote
the nation's Constitution, they specified that "no religious test
shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust
under the United States." (Article 6, section 3) This
provision was radical in its day-- giving equal citizenship to believers
and non-believers alike. They wanted to ensure that no single
religion could make the claim of being the official, national religion,
such as England had. Nowhere in the Constitution does it mention
religion, except in exclusionary terms. The words "Jesus
Christ, Christianity, Bible, and God" are never mentioned in the
Constitution-- not once.
Andrew Sullivan, a senior editor
of The Atlantic, in a reaction essay on Cato-Unbound.org, states:
The achievement of keeping
God at arm's length in the ordering structure of a polity is very,
very rare. Very few countries have achieved it in the history of the
world. America's genius is to have sustained it, even while fostering
an intensely religious, roiling, and often apocalyptic culture. . .
. I share Mark's view of the real import of the Constitution and am
unpersuaded by the attempts of some to portray it as an essentially
Christian achievement. It is a secular achievement that was brilliantly
masked by some Christian window-dressing.
Religious Country, Secular Constitution
Andrew Sullivan, October
15, 2007,
cato-unbound.org
Finally, Ross Douthat writes
on his blog on the Atlantic:
I'm personally grateful
that the American Constitution is an essentially secular document -
not because it protects atheists from rampaging Christianists, but because
it allows orthodox Christians like myself to be loyal to America's government
without requiring us to accept, whole hog, the not-quite-Christian political
theology that has infused American political life from the Declaration
of Independence onward. That's the beauty of our Constitutional order:
It allows one to be American without being an Americanist.
Christians and the Constitution (II)
Ross Douthat, October 18,
2007,
theatlantic.com
So is Paul simply rewriting
the founding principles? Trying to force an unpopular and baseless
Religious Right agenda onto Americans sounds like something our current
Administration would do - reframing the facts along the way to fit
an agenda -- but not what someone who calls for representation, peace
and "freedom".
Ron Paul
and the White Supremacists
"Slavery was phased out
in every other country of the world. And the way I'm advising
that it should have been done like the British Empire did. You
buy the slaves and release them."
-- Ron Paul on Meet the Press, December 2007
Why is Ron Paul
the White Supremacist
candidate of choice
?
To some extent, that question sort of says it all. But such claims
require more than just a question, of course, and some bloggers and
journalists have started to look into the matter, so here's what they
have to say:
A LoneStarTimes.com investigation
has conclusively established that a leading figure in the American neo-Nazi
/ White-Supremacist movement has provided financial support to Ron Paul's
2008 Presidential campaign. The individual in question is Don
Black, the founder, owner and operator of Stormfront, a "white power"
website that both professional journalists and watch-dog groups have
identified as the premier English-language racist/hate-site on the Internet.
. . . LoneStarTimes.com's managing editor Matt Bramanti left multiple
messages last week for officials in Paul's national campaign press
office seeking comment. None were returned.
Here's what wikipedia has
on the incident in which racist comments were published in a Ron Paul
newsletter in 1990s, the Ron Paul Survival Report, though allegedly
not authored by Paul:
. . . Ron Paul Survival
Report . . . included derogatory comments concerning race and other
politicians. Alluding to a 1992 study finding that "of black men
in Washington ... about 85 percent are arrested at some point in their
lives", the newsletter proposed assuming that "95% of the
black males in Washington DC are semi-criminal or entirely criminal",
and stated that "the criminals who terrorize our cities ... largely
are" young black males, who commit crimes "all out of proportion
to their numbers". In 2001, Paul took "moral responsibility"
for the comments printed in his newsletter under his name, telling Texas
Monthly magazine that the comments were written by an unnamed ghostwriter
and did not represent his views.
And blogcritic "SJ Reidhead"
summarizes the issues on racism in his article on the subject:
Congressman Ron Paul has
some very nasty white supremacist friends. If the problem dated only
to this election cycle it would be one thing, but Paul has a past history
of making some rather racially insensitive remarks, on a rather consistent
basis.
Ron Paul and His KKK, White Supremacist, and Neo-Nazi Supporters
SJ Reidhead, November 27, 2007,
blogcritics.org
Here is what Paul said in his
2004 piece, `The Trouble With Forced Integration':
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. Federal bureaucrats and judges cannot read
minds to see if actions are motivated by racism. Therefore, the only
way the federal government could ensure an employer was not violating
the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was to ensure that the racial composition
of a business's workforce matched the racial composition of a bureaucrat
or judge's defined body of potential employees. Thus, bureaucrats began
forcing employers to hire by racial quota. Racial quotas have not contributed
to racial harmony or advanced the goal of a color-blind society. Instead,
these quotas encouraged racial balkanization, and fostered racial strife..
Of course, America has made great strides in race relations over the
past forty years. However, this progress is due to changes in public
attitudes and private efforts. Relations between the races have improved
despite, not because of, the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Here are some interpretations
of Paul's statements from the website
assaultonblacksanity.blogspot.com:
Was the civil rights struggle
of African people in the United States a movement to bring about about
"racial harmony"? Not at all. The movement was about justice, which
is an entirely different concept. Who are these "private property
owners, even those whose actions decent people find abhorrent"? That's
code for white supremacists. What Ron Paul is saying is that the right
of white supremacists to practice racism must be respected.
Finally, Tim Russert makes
an interesting point about in his Meet the Press interview with Paul
when he brings up Paul's views on the Civil War:
MR. RUSSERT: I was
intrigued by your comments about Abe Lincoln. "According
to Paul, Abe Lincoln should never have gone to war; there were better
ways of getting rid of slavery."
REP. PAUL: Absolutely.
Six hundred thousand Americans died in a senseless civil war.
No, he shouldn't have gone, gone to war. He did this just to enhance
and get rid of the original intent of the republic. I mean, it
was the--that iron, iron fist..
MR. RUSSERT: We'd
still have slavery.
REP. PAUL: Oh, come
on, Tim. Slavery was phased out in every other country of the
world. And the way I'm advising that it should have been done
like the British empire did. You, you buy the slaves and release
them.
Meet the Press' transcript:
Representative Ron Paul (R-TX), John Harwood and Chuck Todd
Tim Russert, Dec. 23, 2007,
msnbc.com
Everybody's Gotta Learn Sometime: The Price of Ron Paul
Bill Douglas, in his opinion
piece on Paul, states:
I have worked professionally
and as a full time volunteer for the last 25 years for Democrats.
In all that time I have NEVER heard one Democrat say that they would
dis-assemble the CIA and US military interventionist empire worldwide.
Not once. Ron Paul has made that his central plan.
Why a Liberal Progressive Can AND SHOULD Support Ron Paul
Bill Douglas, December, 24, 2007,
opednews.com
Bill has it right on what moves
us about Paul, but Bill doesn't ask the price for this flicker of
hope, or what we can do about it. The support for Ron Paul on
these positions may have sent a shockwave through the country's leadership
and perhaps has caused some to rethink and consider taking a little
of whatever it is that Ron Paul is having. But if a Democrat has
never said they would disassemble the CIA and US military interventionist
empire, does that mean we should now vote for a right-wing conservative
Libertarian? We have to learn what the real price is for this
so-called `Revolution'.
As Colbert read out a list,
Paul raised his hand higher and higher to agree he would abolish the
Department of Education, Department of Homeland Security, Department
of Energy, the IRS, FEMA, the UN, NATO, the Interstate Commerce Commission,
NAFTA, the WTO -- and even UNICEF, though not so much, "It wouldn't
be one of my targets," he said."
Colbert 'confused' by Republican
candidate Ron Paul
David Edwards and Muriel Kane, June 14, 2007,
Rawstory.com
Some these require huge reforms,
and some could be eliminated gradually, but some are of these extremely
important and are the equivalent of pulling concrete blocks out of the
foundation of one's house in order to "clean house" -- discarding
them risks everything else above.
Perhaps one of the biggest
prices that America and the world would pay under a Ron Paul America
is the likely continued non-response to the impending disaster of Global
Warming under Paul's strict adherence to not "subsidizing" anything
in the public interests at all, under the belief that the market will
solve everything. Here's the summary description of what Ron
Paul's votes amount to on the issue of Global Warming:
Strongly Oppose means you
believe: There's no such thing as global warming - it's all natural
climatic variation. And if there is a problem, it won't affect us much,
and we can deal with the problems as they arise.
Given this looming environmental
disaster predicted to displace millions around the world, should we
really discard the Department of Energy? We are entering a new
era in which the country is attempting to transition away from fossil
fuels and into renewables, and the DOE is one of the primary agencies
organizing that effort in the US. Right now some of the biggest
news in the `Green Revolution' in the US comes in the form of grants,
awards, policies and research from the DOE toward solar and wind energy,
while private corporations have been primarily funding biofuels which
threaten to create a competition between food and energy needs as corn
and soy are already heavily invested in by big corporations.
So in this time of energy crisis,
must we suddenly discard the DOE because it is "Big Government"?
Why does Ron Paul vote against
ending subsidies for oil companies, but won't increase funding for
AMTRAK? A Ron Paul America does not fund public transportation,
only the fuel for private vehicles, oil - clearly a disasterous policy
in the face of Global Warming.
These Ron Paul votes and views
suggest what price will be paid:
* Property
rights are the foundation of all rights. (Sep 2007)
* Rated
0% by NARAL, indicating a pro-life voting record. (Dec 2003)
* Voted
NO on allowing human embryonic stem cell research. (May 2005)
* Voted
YES on banning Family Planning funding in US aid abroad. (May 2001)
* Supports
a Constitutional Amendment for school prayer
* Voted
NO on increasing AMTRAK funding by adding $214M to $900M. (Jun 2006)
* Unlimited
campaign contributions; with full disclosure. (Dec 2000)
* Voted
NO on requiring lobbyist disclosure of bundled donations. (May 2007)
* Voted
NO on granting Washington DC an Electoral vote & vote in Congress.
(Apr 2007)
* Voted
YES on building a fence along the Mexican border. (Sep 2006)
* Voted
NO on increasing minimum wage to $7.25. (Jan 2007)
* Voted
NO on restricting employer interference in union organizing. (Mar 2007)
* Voted
YES on retaining reduced taxes on capital gains & dividends. (Dec
2005)
* Voted
YES on eliminating the Estate Tax ("death tax"). (Apr 2001)
* Voted
NO on strengthening the Social Security Lockbox. (May 1999)
* Voted
YES on making the Bush tax cuts permanent. (Apr 2002)
* Abolish
the federal Department of Education. (Dec 2000)
* 'Take
marching orders from Constitution; not from al Qaeda.' (Sep 2007)
* Present
scientific facts that support creationism. (Sep 2007)
* Tax-credited
programs for Christian schooling. (Sep 2007)
* Disallow
lawsuits that stop public officials invoking God. (Sep 2007)
* Socialized
medicine won't work; nor managed care. (Oct 2007)
* Oppose
mandated health insurance and universal coverage. (Sep 2007)
* Voted
YES on continuing military recruitment on college campuses. (Feb 2005)
* Voted
YES on deploying SDI. (Mar 1999)
* Allow
young people to get out of the system. (Oct 2007)
* Personal
retirement accounts allow investing in one's future. (Sep 2007)
* Federal
government won't keep its entitlement promises. (Mar 2007)
* Rated
30% by the ARA, indicating an anti-senior voting record. (Dec 2003)
Republican Representative (TX-14):
Ron Paul on the
Issues
Conclusion:
A Glimpse of Ron Paul America
In researching this paper I
was stumbling into a lot of questionable stuff, critiques and getting
tired of finding more and more in so many places, so when I came across
a YouTube video titled, "
Ron Paul...Dirty
Secrets From the Past."
I clicked on it, out of curiosity, thinking it would be nice if most
of the critique on him were somehow collected into one easy to view
place.
The video starts with an image
of Paul as a very young child amongst a few other children who appear
to be siblings. We aren't sure which one is Paul in the old
black and white, shown briefly with banjo music in the background.
But then comes the young high school version of Paul and the resemblance
to the gentle white haired doctor we know is striking and sweet, touching.
It says he worked on a farm, was a paperboy. We move forward through
more images of Paul's life - a life recognizable as our own -- how
he had a job at the corner store, how he played baseball for the high
school team, and was even with the Astros . . .
At this point I realize I've
been duped. Instead of digging up more criticisms on Paul, I've
found myself swept up with a young hopeful boy who is just like the
rest of us, a good and wonderful person. I feel ashamed briefly,
for having looked for `dirt.' `He's okay, after all',
is the unmistakable emotional sense I am filled with.
But a moment later I recover,
take a breath, and realize I've been brainwashed by the visual propaganda
of a personal life, and get my bearings again, like the hangover just
starting to set in after the party is over . . .
It occurs to me that this feeling
is like many of the "Ron Paul" feelings I've come to be familiar
with -- the feeling of being duped, tricked into supporting a `truth
candidate' who speaks none of truth I was told he did on the issue
of 9/11/01, and a claim that the `Ron Paul Revolution' is coming
by presenting only the thinnest slices of Paul possible that's palatable,
doling out the suggestion of `real change' while keeping the costs
under wraps, creating false hope, showing me an ink blot instead of
the truth.
But if we look at the facts,
the history, the interviews. the inconsistencies, the strengths, the
weaknesses, we can begin to put together a best estimate of what we
would be in for: my ink blot shows that Paul is slicing up the
world according to a pre-determined agenda fueled in part by the Religious
Right and in part by Libertarian views that property rights are above
human rights, disconnected from the complexity of the reality of America.
A world according to the Libertarian,
isolationist, noninterventionist, nationalist, Christian Religious Right
doctrine of Ron Paul suggests that while some would rejoice (upon coming
home from the war, coming home from service overseas) many in the US
would likely suffer immensely: losing the basic public support services
upon which they may depend each day, like bus systems, school systems
and social security, having the Constitution amended to inject the ideals
of one religion above others, leaving the harrowing transition away
from fossil fuels to alternatives up to the corporations to control,
and on and on, in the footsteps of his icons, Reagan and Bush.
The role of corporations in
general in a Ron Paul America is a topic too huge to get into here,
but also appears to contain the potential for unthinkable devastation
of the public good in favor of private interests, even moreso than occurs
today with corporate personhood - we risk being completely owned by
the credit card and the defense technology corporations, private entities
with property rights.
And there is also the biggest
risk of all. This is the risk of losing the work of world peace
that has been slowly built upon since World War II, the careful and
deliberate work that brought all nations to one table to speak, a table
located in New York City, a place where even Bush's adversaries can
speak freely and inform the world of the dangers. A Ron Paul America
would eliminate that table, that place where Chavez spoke to the world
of the smell of sulfer, the place where the Bush Administration's
efforts to convince the world of WMDs in Iraq were rebuked, the place
where China finally agreed to allow the UN to administer aid to address
the genocide in Darfur.
The remote but distinct possibility
of a world nuclear war -- if the level of isolationism and nationalism
that Paul calls for were enacted -- could be devastating for not just
the US, but many millions or billions. Similarly, with the
worldwide catastrophe of Global Warming upon us, international cooperation
may be a critical factor to survival. This cooperation has no
table at which to occur under a Ron Paul America.
It scares me that people who
want an end to war are being led to believe that the largest effort
at democracy on a world scale -- the United Nations -- is the `bad
guy' tool of the elites that Ron Paul claims it is. I challenge
anyone making such claims to actually attend, as I have, a UN event
or conference or meeting, to read the facts on what the UN does, and
take a look at its history, closely. The UN needs reform and intervention
and support, not rejection and withdrawal.
The point of this essay has
been to provide readers with an array of views and critique on Ron Paul
in order to get the bigger picture on his campaign, because my experiences
while interacting with Ron Paul supporters have suggested that they
typically know only a very few issues that they agree with Paul on .
. . passionately, but little more. If it seems there are "no
other good choices" to vote for anyway who could win, then consider
voting for a so-called Third Party, or not voting at all. If we
never vote for Third Parties, they will never "win".
Americans are hoping for a
revolution, but I'm not sure the kind of revolution a Ron Paul America
would bring will be what many think it will. Don't go with a
warm feeling after watching a video or getting an email. Don't
do that to the rest of the world. Look for yourself, then look
again.
|