I keep running into people that think this guy is something to consider because of his views on Iraq. When I ask them what they think about his views on the other major issues blank stare or change the subject. I havnt found one yet that knows anything about his other positions. He is correct about Iraq, I'll give him that but that is about where it ends for me. The last line of the following rant is exactly what I have found. Paul is a Libertarian Corporatist. He never talks about his views - except on Iraq - because he knows if he does - he'll be dead in the water. Every man for himself. His views on Government are Reaganesque and dead wrong. We The People NEED protection from Corporations significantly more than we need protection from terrorists. Paul would continue turning this country over to the transnational corporations.
There are a number of supporting links embedded in the original - You'll have to go there to get the links
__________________________________________
Ron Paul's views are scary.
He is way off base on life before Social Security. His pro-life, anti-abortion views are upsetting as well. I wonder how many people see his anti-war stance and fail to look at the rest of what he is about.
As for Social Security, "we didn't have it until 1935," Paul says. "I mean, do you read stories about how many people were laying in the streets and dying and didn't have medical treatment? . . . Prices were low and the country was productive and families took care of themselves and churches built hospitals and there was no starvation."
Actually there were such things happening, and most people did not have access to doctors. That is a very idealized picture he paints. I remember the tales of my grandparents about after the depression hit in 1929. Not only could they not afford medical care, many could not afford food on the table.
I have seen article after article this week comparing Ron Paul to Howard Dean...there just is no comparison. Ron Paul is not the "Howard Dean of 08". Their views on our taking care of each other are drastically different.
Dean on Social Security:
"Social Security is a moral value for people who have worked all their life. They deserve to retire with dignity. We ought not to turn our retirement programs over to the same people who gave us Enron."
...."You know the Social Security debate is not just about money. It's about whether we have responsibility for each other as a community, or not."
Ron Paul did not believe we should send aid to Katrina victims. This is why I am so angry when I see all the comparisons of him to people like Howard Dean...who said we are our brother's keeper.
Voted NO on sending aid to Katrina victims.
"Last year, 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. "Why do people in Arizona have to be robbed in order to support the people on the coast?"
He'd rather say not
I do believe we must "bail out" each other. It is a terrifying thought that he is one who wants us to be on our own. Neighbor can not always help neighbor. When 3 hurricanes hit us, we were all shown our helpless side. When neighbors are down and out and struggling, they can not do much for each other. We were all so busy after the 3 storms in 6 weeks just getting ourselves off the floor emotionally, that a neighbor in great stress died alone before we knew to help him.
There must be a government program to help "bail" us out.
I am troubled also by Ron Paul's views on abortion.
"Abortion on demand is the ultimate State tyranny; the State simply declares that certain classes of human beings are not persons, and therefore not entitled to the protection of the law. The State protects the "right" of some people to kill others, just as the courts protected the "property rights" of slave masters in their slaves. Moreover, by this method the State achieves a goal common to all totalitarian regimes: it sets us against each other, so that our energies are spent in the struggle between State-created classes, rather than in freeing all individuals from the State. Unlike Nazi Germany, which forcibly sent millions to the gas chambers (as well as forcing abortion and sterilization upon many more), the new regime has enlisted the assistance of millions of people to act as its agents in carrying out a program of mass murder.
He authored a bill that declared that life begins at conception, a view which is NOT conducive to some forms of birth control nor with stem cell research. His views disturb me.
Apparently it was dramatic enough to cause Paul to author H.R. 1094, a bill that declares that "human life shall be deemed to exist from conception," a standard Christian Right viewpoint. While Paul has written, "I have never been one who is comfortable talking about my faith in the political arena," this faith, in conjunction with his traumatic residency experience, seems to have left him deeply troubled by abortion in a way organizations like Focus on the Family would no doubt find familiar. "Many talk about being pro-life," Paul continued. "I have taken and will continue to advocate direct action to restore protection for the unborn."
Ron Paul's pro life rhetoric
Here is more about his view on stem-cell research. While he says he opposes it because it is a funding issue....it seems his staunch pro-life stance would cause him to be against it. Most who view life as beginning at conception do oppose stem cell research.
Stem Cell Research
Paul backed President Bush's veto of congressional legislation to expand federal funding for non-embryonic stem cell research, saying he doesn't oppose such research but objects to federal funding for it. The founding fathers, Paul also wrote, "intended to keep issues such as embryonic stem cell research entirely out of Washington's hands."
His views on health care go along with what he said about Social Security above. Every man for himself. That philosophy scares the hell out of me. That is a bare bones hands off approach that I find appalling.
Health Care
In 2006, Paul wrote that "the problems with our health care system are not the result of too little government intervention but, rather, too much." The solutions, he argued, lie in allowing individuals to deduct from their taxes all of their health care costs, as businesses do, and in promoting "true competition" in the market for health care provisions. Paul has also supported legislation permitting individuals to buy "negative outcome" insurance before major medical treatments in order to reduce "the burden of costly malpractice litigation."
Ron Paul on the issues
How does one have tax deductions when one is not working? That happens a lot to the best of people....being out of work.
I truly was alarmed at his statement about Social Security....I believe that really is the worst.
Here is a little bit about life after the 1929 depression and before FDR's formation of Social Security...Ron Paul is way off base on this .
The trauma for the elderly of that era can hardly be overstated. As W. Andrew Achenbaum, a historian at the University of Houston, put it, ''The Depression destroyed every mechanism that had existed for covering the vicissitudes of old-age dependency."
"Before the creation of Social Security, some Americans had private or state pensions, but most supported themselves into old age by working. The 1930 census, for example, found 58 percent of men over 65 still in the workforce; in contrast, by 2002, the figure was 18 percent.
The elderly also relied heavily on their families. ''Children, friends and relatives have borne and still carry the major cost of supporting the aged,'' the Committee on Economic Security, the Roosevelt administration panel that developed Social Security, reported in 1935. ''Several of the state surveys have disclosed that from 30 to 50 percent of the people over 65 years of age were being supported in this way.''
The Depression swept this world away. Many of the elderly could no longer find work. Those who had been lucky enough to have a pension or some savings saw them disappear. And many who relied on their children saw them buckle under the strain.
''I am in no position to do the right thing for my mother,'' one woman wrote to Roosevelt. "I thought as long as I lived there was no need to worry about her being taken care of, but I never dreamed of a depression like we have had."
The World: Life Before Social Security; 'A Great Calamity Has Come Upon Us'
And Michael Katz in the WP has some things to say about that.
"Where to begin with this one?" asks Michael Katz, a historian of poverty at the University of Pennsylvania who has studied charity case records from the early 20th century. "The stories just break your heart, the kind of suffering that people endured. . . . Stories of families that had literally no cash and had to kind of beg to get the most minimal forms of food, who lived in tiny, little rooms that were ill-heated and ill-ventilated, who were sick all the time, who had meager clothing . . ."
Congressman Paul's Legislative Strategy? He'd Rather Say Not.
His anti-war views are good, but I wonder if all the people making those huge donations this week are truly aware of the rest of his philosophy.
Posts: 16 | Location: Northern IL | Registered: 13 June 2006
I don't see him as any scarier than any other libertarian/Ayn Rand proponent of "individualism" and personal responsibility. I see him as not troubling to figure out the consequences of this non governmental intervention concept, and thus he can be fairly simple about what he says.
or,
Free Market = Deus ex machina
quote:
The phrase deus ex machina (Latin IPA: [ˈdeːus eks ˈmaːkʰina] (literally "god out of a machine") describes an unexpected, artificial, or improbable character, device, or event introduced suddenly in a work of fiction or drama to resolve a situation or untangle a plot (source)
As a so-called leader of this mess, I doubt he's going to stop Congress from doing much in terms of passing a law it actually wants to pass, if it's serious, it can override a veto, and at the very least he will impact the rest of the world in a less desultory way than what we've witnessed here recently. I simply compare him to, say, the leaders in the presidential candidate packs of both parties, and he then seems potentially less harmful than any of them. He says he doesn't agree with the presidential power grab under the Unitary Executive Theory. He'll probably disagree with whatever Congress there is and we'll have the benefits of some sort of governmental stalemate. Much preferable to the fascist shift I'm watching.
The power of propaganda has remade Ron Paul as a "Libertarian" when in fact he is a crypto-fascist. Don't be fooled. Take a closer look. This is another version of "Compassionate Conservatism " packaging that Bush used to make his image more palatable.
It's been a rough week for Ron Paul's Republican presidential campaign. First it emerged that he had written a campaign letter(Brendan Nyhan has the PDF) promoting his candidacy in distinctly Patriot/militiaman-like terms:
I don’t need to tell you that our American way of life is under attack. We see it all around us — every day — and it is up to us to save it.
The world’s elites are busy forming a North American Union. If they are successful, as they were in forming the European Union, the good ‘ol USA will only be a memory. We can’t let that happen.
The UN also wants to confiscate our firearms and impose a global tax. The UN elites want to control the world’s oceans with the Law of the Sea Treaty. And they want to use our military to police the world.
The Robert A. Taft Club, a group headed by a man with a network of racist connections, has announced that a U.S. congressman, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), will address the group this Thursday at a restaurant in Arlington, Va.
The Taft Club is led by Marcus Epstein, who serves as the executive director of both white nationalist Pat Buchanan’s The American Cause and the Team America PAC, which is run by Buchanan’s sister, Bay Buchanan. Epstein writes for the anti-immigrant hate site vdare.com and he advocates for white supremacist organizations. He is especially fond of American Renaissance — a white supremacist journal that has suggested that blacks have “psychopathic personalities” — and attends the journal’s biannual conferences. In 2006, Epstein invited the head of American Renaissance’s parent organization, Jared Taylor, to speak to the Taft Club on the issue of “Race and Conservatism.”
Taylor isn’t the only extremist Epstein has invited to speak at the Taft Club’s meetings. Both Paul Gottfried, who has spoken at American Renaissance gatherings, and Robert Stacy McCain, a foe of interracial marriage who is an editor at The Washington Times, have spoken to the club. (Epstein is listed as one of McCain’s friends on McCain’s Facebook Internet page). This past February, Epstein invited two members of a racist and anti-immigrant Belgian party, Vlaams Belang, to speak to his group. In 2004, an earlier incarnation of the Vlaams Belang, Vlaams Blok, was banned on the grounds that it incited racial hatred.
As Steve Benen says:
Listening to the debates, Paul often comes across as the most sensible guy on the stage, especially when it comes to Iraq and the Patriot Act. And then we're reminded, in print, that when it comes to a paranoid vision of the world, Paul really is out there on the political periphery.
Well, regular readers here already know about Paul's extended history of dalliances with right-wing xenophobes, racists, and conspiracy theorists. You have to wonder how he's managed to keep it hidden for so long. Has the press been looking the other way?
Remembrance of the Fascists may give rise to dangerous insights... Herbert Marcuse
Posts: 3909 | Location: California, Bay Area | Registered: 31 October 2004
Molly Ivins, God bless her big heart, warned us about Ron Paul over a decade ago. Her coverage of this 1996 Texas congressional races included this prescient precis:
Dallas' 5th District, East Texas' 2nd District and the amazing 14th District,which runs all over everywhere, are also in play. In the amazing 14th, Democrat Lefty Morris (his slogan is ''Lefty is Right!'') faces the Republican/Libertarian Ron Paul, who is himself so far right that he's sometimes left, as happens with your Libertarians. I think my favorite issue here is Paul's 1993 newsletter advising ''Frightened Americans'' on how to get their money out of the country. He advised that Peruvian citizenship could be purchased for a mere 25 grand. That we should all become Peruvians is one of the more innovative suggestions of this festive campaign season. But what will the Peruvians think of it?
Molly, with her usual insight, laid out the essential struggle we're having with Paul. As a libertarian leftist, I understand viscerally the charm of Paul's message. Who wouldn't be charmed? He's anti-war, anti-torture, anti-drug war, and anti-corporation -- a real progressive dream date. Until you reflect on the fact that he's also anti-choice, anti-gay, anti-environment, anti-sane immigration policy, and apparently, anti-separation of church and state as well:
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.
-- From a "War on Religion" article Ron Paul wrote in December 2003 (found at Lew Rockwell.com):
And that's the trouble we're having with Ron. There's just a whole lot going on under that affable exterior that deserves a hard second look before we clutch the man to our collective bosom. The political writers in Texas back in that '96 campaign knew quite a bit about this, and their writing survives to tell some interesting tales. Here, for example, is Clay Robison, writing in the Houston Chronicle the same week Molly wrote the above:
[Democratic candidate] Morris recently distributed copies of political newsletters written by Paul in 1992 in which the Surfside physician endorsed the concept of secession, defended cross burning as an act of free speech and expressed sympathy for a man sentenced to prison for bombing an IRS building.
Cross-burning as free speech? (And sympathy for domestic terrorist bombers?) Um, yeah. Two months later, the Austin American-Statesman let Paul share his views in his own words:
Not all officials express alarm when discussing cross burnings. U.S.Rep.-elect Ron Paul, a Texas Republican from Surfside, described such activity as a form of free speech in some situations.
"Cross burning could be a crime if they were violating somebody's property rights,'' he said during his campaign. But if you go out on your farm some place and it's on your property and you put two sticks together and you burn it, I am not going to send in the federal police."
See, here's that problem again. When Paul explains it, it sounds all nice and reasonable. What you do on your property absolutely should be your business, and nobody should be able to tell you what you can and can't put on your Saturday night bonfire. But Texas was having a huge upswing in cross-burnings that year, which were part of an (all-too-successful) effort to terrorize its African-American community. There's plenty of legal precedent that one person's right to free speech ends when it begins to terrorize others into silence -- and, because of this, cross-burning is recognized as a hate crime in many jurisdictions across the country. But Ron Paul, for all his libertarian talk, apparently doesn't believe in putting any restrictions on speech, even when it damages other individuals and the overall level of civil behavior in society.
And then there's the company he keeps. Dave is going to have more on this soon; but if you want to know someone's character, look at the people he surrounds himself with. (Most of us wish we'd understood more about Bush's friends before the 2000 election -- let's not repeat that mistake here.)
First, there's Tom DeLay. Paul may be loudly anti-corporate and anti-GOP establishment; but that didn't stop him from taking $6,000 from DeLay's ARMPAC. According to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Paul returned the favor by voting to weaken House ethics rules when DeLay proposed doing so as GOP Majority Leader; and to allow DeLay to continue to serve after an indictment. Since DeLay is easily the biggest corporate whore Washington has seen since Mark Hanna, we're not wrong to wonder about Paul's true enthusiasm for curbing corporate excess.
Then, there's the 100% legislative ranking Paul got from Cannabis Culture magazine -- a fact that lifts liberal spirits everywhere, and is very consistent with his libertarian views. But we shouldn't let that blind us to the fact that he also got 100% rankings from both the Christian Coalition and the John Birch Society -- two entities far more powerful and serious than Cannabis Culture,, and which actively wish ill on people like us. Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson actively helped midwife Paul's budding political career: according to the New York Times, his political teams were circulating campaign letters promoting Paul over Bush I as a presidential candidate all the way back in 1988.
More serious are the friends on the farthest right edges -- the tax patriots, "sovereign citizens," and proto-fascists who have supported him from the beginning and are supporting him still. It's been quite a while since the militia fever of the early 90s acquainted us all the permutations of these loony-right movements (if you can't tell the players without a scorecard, the ADL provides a very good one here); but commenter Hume's Ghost pointed us to this excellent summary:
Many commentators have portrayed the Patriot and militia movements as fascist. We believe it is more accurate to describe them as right-wing populist movements with important fascistic tendencies-thus they are quasifascist or protofascist. Like the America First movement of the early 1940s, the Patriot movement and the militias represented a large-scale convergence of committed fascists with nonfascist activists. Such coalitions enable fascists to gain new recruits, increase their legitimacy among millions of people, and repackage their doctrines for mass consumption.
Mary Rupert dubbed the Patriot movement "A Seedbed for Fascism" and suggested that the "major missing piece in looking at the Patriot Movement in relation to fascism is that it does not overtly advance an authoritarian scheme of government. In fact, its emphasis seems to be on protecting individual rights." According to Rupert, there are two "portents of possibility" that could shift this situation: "First is the below-the-surface disposition of the Patriot Movement towards authoritarianism, and second is the way in which Patrick Buchanan...picked up and played out the Patriots’ grievances." We would add that "individual rights," like states’ rights, can also be a cover for the sort of decentralized social totalitarianism promoted by the neofascists of the Posse Comitatus and Christian Reconstructionism -- both of which helped lay the groundwork for the Patriot movement itself.
This puts a new context around Paul's relationship with The Patriot Network, a South Carolina-based group that's part of the "tax resistance" movement. This crew threw a 2004 banquet in Ron Paul's honor, as I mentioned in an earlier post (their newsletter noted that "most of the state's leading nationalist figures attended,").
Groups like this one aren't just a bunch of Howard Jarvis-type disgruntled taxpayers. The Patriot Network, like others going all the way back to the Posse Comitatus of the 70s, coaches members on how to avoid taxes, bilking them of thousands of dollars by selling them "untax" packages that will enable them -- under their own bizarre theory of government -- to exempt themselves from taxation. These "untax" theories have been repeatedly refuted by the courts across the country over the past couple decades; and several leaders of previous organizations offering similar services have been convicted and jailed for tax fraud. As noted above, the Patriot movement overlaps strongly with a variety of Christian Identity, militia, "sovereign citizen," and other ideologies dear to the heart of the far-right domestic terrorist agenda.
Another site that's endorsed Paul is the Dixie Daily News, a neo-Confederate website full of articles on states' rights, gold-backed currency, and how the South was right all along. Paul writes for this site frequently -- as does his friend and former legislative aide Gary North, who is also R.J. Rushdooney's son-in-law and a leading light of the Christian Reconstructionist movement. At the moment, the headline at the site is promoting Ron Paul's appearance at the group's "FreedomFest" in Las Vegas next month.
If Paul is making public appearances for this group, we need to be asking: why is he running for office in a government he clearly doesn't believe in?
If you doubt that Paul has the support of our proto-fascists, don't take my word for it -- take theirs. This endorsement, for example, recently appeared on national KKK leader David Duke's website. And I'll let an anonymous commenter from Stormfront, the far right's favorite Web watering hole, have the final word:
Anyone who doesn't vote for Paul on this site is an assclown. Sure he doesn't come right out and say he is a WN [white nationalist], who cares! He promotes agendas and ideas that allow Nationalism to flourish. If we "get there" without having to raise hell, who cares; aslong as we finally get what we want. I don't understand why some people do not support this man, Hitler is dead, and we shall probably never see another man like him.
Pat Buchanan's book "Where the Right Went Wrong" is a prime example of getting the point across without having the book banned for anti semitism. The chapters about the war in Iraq sound like a BarMitzvah, but he doesn't have to put the Star of David next to each name for us to know what he means. We are running out of options at this point, and I will take someone is 90% with us versus any of the other choices.
Not to mention if Paul makes a serious run, he legitimizes White Nationalism and Stormfront, for God's sake David Duke is behind this guy!
Bill Maher and Jon Stewart may love the ratings Ron Paul brings in. But the growing pile of evidence is proving that Paul, for all his freedom-loving talk, is in the pocket of the very people this blog has spent the past four years warning about. His links to the murderous brownshirt fringe that brought us the Freemen standoff and the Oklahoma City bombing are too strong to be ignored.
If America ever becomes a fascist state, it will be Ron Paul's long-time followers who bring it about. And we -- progressives, miniorities, feminists, gays, "intellectuals," and Jews like Maher and Stewart -- with be the first ones to feel their genocidal rage. We cannot overlook his long association with far-right extremists just because he agrees with us that the war is wrong and pot should be legal. If Bush has taught us anything, it's that we need to hold ourselves and our candidates to much higher standards than that. What we choose to overlook now, we will live to regret later.
Remembrance of the Fascists may give rise to dangerous insights... Herbert Marcuse
Posts: 3909 | Location: California, Bay Area | Registered: 31 October 2004
Yes! that expresses it. A prime target for "fun" poking.
The answer to the if, in this if/then:
quote:
If America ever becomes a fascist state, it will be Ron Paul's long-time followers who bring it about.
may be questionable, however. I think the possibilities of the answer to if are inclusive of a far greater range than Ron Paul's long-time followers. I think it's more likely to occur as a hoodwinked whimper to the shenanigans of anyone from Hillary on across than to that identified follower group. Ron Paul has less of a chance of developing a mass movement and then directing it than just about any other candidate. He cancels himself with all those contradictions.
The answer to the if, in this if/then: quote: If America ever becomes a fascist state, it will be Ron Paul's long-time followers who bring it about.
I'll be darn. You found a fallacy in the article I totally overlooked. The argument is presented as...
Argument One:
1. If America ever becomes a fascist state,[then] it will be Ron Paul's long-time followers who bring it about.
2.Ron Paul's long-time followers will bring it about. -------------------------------------- Therefore, America becomes a fascist state.
This is called in logic "The fallacy of affirming the consequence."
There can be other causes that make, or I argue already made, America a fascist state. In other words Paul's long-time followers can be a sufficient , but not a necessary condition to turn America into a fascist state--there can be other causes. The fallacy is clearer if were argue affirming the antecedent and get a false conclusion." The argument would look like this.... Argument Two:
1. If America ever becomes a fascist state,[then] it will be Ron Paul's long-time followers who bring it about.
2.America became a fascist state. -------------------------------------- Ron Paul's long-time followers [brought] it [fascism] about.
Clearly the conclusion is false. There can be other causes of fascism.
So I think this is a case of poor writing. The author meant to argue...
quote:
Argument Three:
1. If Ron Paul's long-time followers come to power, then America will become a fascist state.
2.Ron Paul's long-time followers come to power. -------------------------------------- Therefore, America will become a fascist state.
For a "Modus Pollen" argument to be sound , the sufficient condition must always come before the necessary condition. S -> N. By the way, none of this saves Ron Paul.
Good catch Ren! And while I'll complimenting you, I was going to write a huge response to another impressive analysis you wrote in the thread Gerbil Ball of 1984 where you discuss Rene Descarte, Plato, The Self, and Existentialism. My God, I was taken back at the careful analysis. I studied all these philosophers and I know you haven't read the academic literature on these thinkers, and yet you were right in there with original arguments dealing with the same key philosophical issues and key conclusions! A good mind combined with a genuine love of knowledge is better than any academic degree! I didn't follow up because you brought up so many good points that I choked and couldn't find a place to begin a response! Ha! that's the end result of academia--paralysis!
Remembrance of the Fascists may give rise to dangerous insights... Herbert Marcuse
Posts: 3909 | Location: California, Bay Area | Registered: 31 October 2004
Hey, my friend, thank you! From you I do value that little bit of notice (didn't know you were reading me either, I figured that was the stuff people tend to ignore, more than two sentences and all.).
I fear it may have had little effect, otherwise, but I value the opportunity that Kerry has brought to the board allowing me discuss and try to explain some philosophical context I'm rarely called upon to articulate. He has an extremely dense and well worked out argument for individualism, and it's been enjoyable to learn.
Kind of amazing where that started, first talking about the Green Ball of 1934, and now where it's got to on individualism.
Are you familiar with this BBC documentary series: The Century of the Self? Same group that did Power of Nightmares. It's what got us into the discussion of individualism. I have it collected at my vodpod: ren's video collection. I'm sure you've got Edward Bernays and his propaganda techniques somewhere in your vast index to posts on the critique of fascism.
Ron Paul was waterboarded and that's how he got so thin.
Damn, James deleted the post and now we look like we're trippin'.
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
Posts: 8264 | Location: Fl | Registered: 05 July 2001
Sorry, I am typing too fast. I deleted the post and placed it where it belongs. BTW: I remember Ron Paul when he use to write for the Mother Earth News. He is not a corporatist. In fact he and Dennis Kuccinich are friends and have a mutual respect. You don't agree with the guy fine. But don't make this stuff up.
"a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason."
Posts: 1944 | Location: Beautiful New Paltz, NY | Registered: 04 July 2006
I'm not, I don't care if anyone thinks I'm trippin'.
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.
Posts: 8264 | Location: Fl | Registered: 05 July 2001
Are you familiar with this BBC documentary series: The Century of the Self? Same group that did Power of Nightmares. It's what got us into the discussion of individualism. I have it collected at my vodpod: ren's video collection. I'm sure you've got Edward Bernays and his propaganda techniques somewhere in your vast index to posts on the critique of fascism.
I stumbled across that video of "The Century of the Self" and watched it only because you showed interest in it and figured it was something special. I still have the last part to view but I was stunned to discover Edward Bernays and was more than little upset with myself that I never heard of him!!! Never came across his name or work anywhere. Obviously, Bernays is very important in our history--these persons tend not to get any mention in formal serious study because the implications are too explosive! And the series had short interviews with Herbert Marcuse! I went nuts! Marcuse never mentioned Bernays, but he certainly knew about him since Marcuse was trained in psychoanalysis also.
Oh, I did in fact write the following:
quote:
Posted 15.October.2007 10:52 PM I would like to thank Ren for bring this excellent documentary to our attention. Even if you are a Psychology major in an American University, it is unlikely any time would be spent studying Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytical theories. Yet, American consumer society was built on Freudian assumptions about human behavior. American corporations and later government security agencies didn't hesitation utilizing Freudian psychology. This BBC film documents the early history of American propaganda. This is another subject area in which Americans have to turn to other countries to understand their own true history. The Century of the Self: Part 1.
Even I had the attitude that this was a strange, or odd area of Marcuse's work and did emphasis it in my study of Marcuse and never could come to a definite committed conclusion to this area of Marcuse's writing because I had been so brainwashed to the "unscientific" character of psychoanalysis. Yet, I knew there was something to it but I gave in to peer pressure and suspended any judgment of Freud's work. That's what pisses me off. Like Marxist philosophy, academia knows it works and that's why they bad mouth it. So students today are taught Rat Psychology and Milton Freidman--they are the same time.
Remembrance of the Fascists may give rise to dangerous insights... Herbert Marcuse
Posts: 3909 | Location: California, Bay Area | Registered: 31 October 2004
I'm not, I don't care if anyone thinks I'm trippin'.
They still do that? The last time I heard that term was 1970
"a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason."
Posts: 1944 | Location: Beautiful New Paltz, NY | Registered: 04 July 2006
Even I had the attitude that this was a strange, or odd area of Marcuse's work and did emphasis it in my study of Marcuse and never could come to a definite committed conclusion to this area of Marcuse's writing because I had been so brainwashed to the "unscientific" character of psychoanalysis. Yet, I knew there was something to it but I gave in to peer pressure and suspended any judgment of Freud's work. That's what pisses me off. Like Marxist philosophy, academia knows it works and that's why they bad mouth it.
Posts: 7939 | Location: Santa Barbara | Registered: 19 July 2005
I don't believe Ron Paul is an Objectivist: Both he and Dennis Kuccinh speak of some collective spirituality that should be the source of our responsibility to humanity. However, they seek very different mechanisms for achieving it. I don't believe Ron Paul espouses the "Virtues of Selfishness" I am beginning to think if you want to abolish globalization, enact the gold standard
"a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason."
Posts: 1944 | Location: Beautiful New Paltz, NY | Registered: 04 July 2006
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