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
I am beginning to think if you want to abolish globalization, enact the gold standard
James, maybe you can expand on why you think this (the gold standard) will 'abolish globalization'. And try to be as specific about it as possible; including what forces will bring about its demise.
Posts: 7939 | Location: Santa Barbara | Registered: 19 July 2005
Anti, thanks for keying me to those posts. I've been doing a lot less on this board over the past few months, and I've been very focused on just a few things, so unfortunately I overlooked that.
And about Marcuse... yes! He was. Sounds like you have a few blanks to fill in now. I'd consider it fun!
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, and that's why I figured you knew about Bernays, because of Marcuse. Also, the point you made about the implications being too explosive, I looked for the documentary on DVD and discovered it had been put on DVD, and it had been marketed, and had been reviewed at Amazon, but was no longer available. And of course the question why pops into my mind, and your extensive analysis of the subject makes perfect sense as a place to seek some answers.
Ron: Perhaps tomorrow. I am out the door. Good Night to all
"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 thought this analysis from Juan Cole, regarding an apparent rising popularity Ron Paul seems to be enjoying with potential voters, and his improving ability to raise funds that has brought him close to John McCain's abilities, apparently, might be worth considering in the context of this thread. It also may be worth considering in terms of the top handlers' possible misreading of the populace in terms of the importance, not just of the Iraq debacle, but of the way government itself has been handled by the current administration. In other words, it might be a worth while message for all parties at the moment to consider:
I'm not sure it is just Iraq that drives Ron Paul's popularity, though of course that is part of it. I suspect that it is in some important part the abuse of government by W. and his administration that has made rightwing anarchism so popular. (It has done wonders for leftwing anarchism too: witness the reemergence of Noam Chomsky as a major voice after he had been marginalized for decades).
Government is a set of bargains, a 'moral economy.' We let the government take a certain proportion of our money, and we expect it to organize services for us that would otherwise be difficult to arrange. Anyone who has studied any history and economics knows that the market is going to leave some people destitute, and you need government to correct for that imbalance. It is no accident that government was invented by irrigation-based societies like Egypt and Iraq, where if someone did not organize the peasants to do the irrigation work and keep it up, everybody would starve.
Bush has broken the US government. The US military was there to protect us. Bush has used it to fight a fascist-style aggressive war of choice. FEMA is there for emergency aid. Bush did not deploy it effectively for New Orleans. Social security lifted the elderly out of the poverty that had often been their fate before the 1930s. Bush declined to use Clinton's surplus to fix the system, and has essentially borrowed against the pensions of us all to pay for his wars. Government is there to ensure our security. Bush has used it to spy on us, to prosecute patently innocent persons, to manipulate the media and instill us with lies and propaganda.
If government is to be conducted on Bushist principles, then who would not like to see the damn thing abolished?
I don't think Ron Paul would have run well in 2000, after Bill Clinton had demonstrated the ways in which government could contribute to our prosperity and well-being. Indeed, it was so important for the Right to destroy Clinton precisely because he did make government relatively effective and popular.
Ron Paul's popularity does not derive only from his opposition to the Iraq War. It derives from the sanity of the American people, who love liberty and reject Bushism. The opposite of fascism is not democracy but anarchy.
Given how horribly corporations like Walmart treat their employees, denying them the right to unionize and cleverly avoiding paying anything toward their health insurance, I have never understood why Libertarians think corporations would be nicer to us if we could not organize government protections from them. It is the government of the state of Maryland that protected workers from Walmart's exploitation of them. Libertarian faith in the utopia that comes from the withering of the state strikes me as just as impractical as the similar Marxist theory.
But after 7 years of Bush, I don't find it at all astonishing that large numbers of internet contributors would give Ron Paul money to campaign on getting rid of the Frankenstein's Monster of a government that George W. Bush has been constructing in his macabre basement of a mind.
I consider myself a 'compassionate libertarian'--or, what some have described here as 'leftist libertarianism'.
I don't really know much about Ron Paul--but, I have heard his statements on the Iraqi War and I agree with that totally.
Plus, you have to realize that, due to the huge national debt the Bush administration has helped elevate to unprecedented levels, that will, eventually, contribute to having all 'government services' become insolvent--including Social Security. It's almost like the war has to continue to justify the debt--and the government deficit spending that support it. Once it's over, there will be no distractions left to divert the burgeoning debt into 'private profit'--and 'markets' will respond, accordingly, I'm afraid. So will the economy. That's probably why there's not more 'politicians' speaking out against the war. To them, if it wasn't for 'the war', there wouldn't be anything left to 'appease the market'.....
Posts: 841 | Location: Texas | Registered: 07 May 2007
Paul IS correct abotu Iran - He's just dead wrong about almost everything that has to do with People, the Commons, or Democracy. Paul is a candidate for the Me rather than the Us community
Posts: 16 | Location: Northern IL | Registered: 13 June 2006
In the comments thread to my previous post on Ron Paul, the indispensable Trefayne compiled a series of posts on Paul's track record as a congressman, particularly those bills he sponsored or co-sponsored.
Here's Trefayne:
What's more, consider Ron Paul's record in Congress. Not that he'll ever occupy the Oval Office, but what would he do after pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq? His past legislative proposals will provide some clues, and they are not friendly to progressive ideas. Here are some bills that Ron Paul has proposed, not merely voted on, but sponsored. And you can see that he tries repeatedly on certain issues, which suggests they are important to him.
INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS -- He opposes the right of women to be free to control their own reproductive systems if they happen to live in particular states or other countries, or if they work for the Peace Corps.
Ron Paul introduces three pro-life bills
H.R.1095: To prohibit any Federal official from expending any Federal funds for any population control or population planning program or any family planning activity.
H.R.777: To prohibit any Federal official from expending any Federal funds for any population control or population planning program or any family planning activity.
H.R.1548: To prohibit any Federal official from expending any Federal funds for any population control or population planning program or any family planning activity.
H.AMDT.1003 (A024): Amendment no. 17 printed in the Congressional Record to prohibit the use of funding for abortion, family planning, or population control efforts.
H.AMDT.380 (A022): An amendment no. 9 printed in the Congressional Record to prohibit funding for population control or population planning programs; family planning activities; or abortion procedures.
H.AMDT.312 (A011): An amendment, printed as amendment No. 32 in the Congressional Record of July 16, 1997, to prohibit the use of funds appropriated in the bill for Family Planning, birth control or abortion.
H.R.4984: A bill to prohibit the use of funds for the Peace Corps to be used for travel expenses of individuals in order for abortions to be performed on those individuals.
-- He wants to erase the distinction in U.S. law between a zygote and a person
H.R.2597: To provide that human life shall be deemed to exist from conception.
H.R.1094: To provide that human life shall be deemed to exist from conception.
H.R.776: To provide that human life shall be deemed to exist from conception
H.R.392: A bill proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States guaranteeing the right to life.
-- He would deny the use of the Federal court system -- and even Federal precedent -- to people discriminated against because of their religious beliefs or sexual orientation. This would also limit the cross-state recognition of same-sex marriages. Some of these bills he cynically calls this the "We the People Act".
H.R.300: To limit the jurisdiction of the Federal courts, and for other purposes.
H.R.4379: To limit the jurisdiction of the Federal courts, and for other purposes.
H.R.5739: To limit the jurisdiction of the Federal courts, and for other purposes.
H.R.3893: To limit the jurisdiction of the Federal courts, and for other purposes.
H.R.1547: To restore first amendment protections of religion and religious speech.
H.R.4922: To restore first amendment protections of religion and speech.
H.R.5078: To restore first amendment protections of religion and speech.
-- This includes limits on courts' hearing cases related to abortion, and he has introduced bills specific to these kinds of cases. He also uses the deceptive term "partial-birth abortion".
H.R.1545: To prohibit Federal officials from paying any Federal funds to any individual or entity that performs partial-birth abortions.
H.R.1546: To provide that the inferior courts of the United States do not have jurisdiction to hear abortion-related cases.
H.R.2875: To provide that the inferior courts of the United States do not have jurisdiction to hear abortion-related cases.
H.R.3400: To provide that the inferior courts of the United States do not have jurisdiction to hear abortion-related cases.
H.R.3691: To provide that the inferior courts of the United States do not have jurisdiction to hear partial-birth abortion-related cases.
H.R.15169: A bill to eliminate the appellate jurisdiction of the U.S. Supreme Court with respect to certain abortion cases.
-- Even though he claims to be a "libertarian", he opposes people's freedom to burn or destroy their own copies of the design of the U.S. flag
H.J.RES.80: Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States authorizing the States to prohibit the physical destruction of the flag of the United States and authorizing Congress to prohibit destruction of federally owned flags.
H.J.RES.82: Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States authorizing the States to prohibit the physical destruction of the flag of the United States and authorizing Congress to prohibit destruction of federally owned flags.
LAWS IMPROVING THE LOT OF THE WORKING CLASS
-- He has tried to repeal the Occupational Safety and Health Act:
H.R.2310: A bill to repeal the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970.
H.R.13264: A bill to repeal the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970
-- He would like to make it much easier to decertify labor unions:
H.R.694: To amend the National Labor Relations Act to permit elections to decertify representation by a labor organization.
-- He opposes the Minimum Wage:
H.R.2962: A bill to repeal all authority of the Federal Government to regulate wages in private employment.
-- He would deny the prevailing wage to employees of federal contractors, and remove prohibition on kickbacks in Federal projects:
H.R.736: To repeal the Davis-Bacon Act and the Copeland Act.
H.R.2720: To repeal the Davis-Bacon Act and the Copeland Act.
-- He wants to severely weaken Social Security:
H.R.2030: A bill to amend the Social Security Act and the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 to make social security coverage completely optional for both present and future workers, to freeze benefit levels, to provide for the partial financing of future benefits from general revenues subject to specified conditions, to eliminate the earnings test, to make changes in the tax treatment of IRA accounts, and for other purposes.
H.R.4604: A bill to repeal the recently enacted requirement of mandatory social security coverage for employees of nonprofit organizations.
VOTER ISSUES
-- He has come out against attempts to make the United States more democratic, including the idea of eliminating the Electoral College, even *after* the debacle in the 2000 Presidential election:
H.CON.RES.48: Expressing the sense of the Congress in reaffirming the United States of America as a republic.
H.CON.RES.443: Expressing the sense of the Congress in reaffirming the United States of America as a republic.
-- He wants to repeal the "Motor Voter" Act, which has made it easier for people to register to vote.
H.R.2139: To repeal the National Voter Registration Act of 1993.
CORPORATE POWER
-- He would repeal significant portions of antitrust law, including the Sherman Antitrust Act, the Clayton Antitrust Act, and others.
H.R.1247: To ensure and foster continued patient safety and quality of care by exempting health care professionals from the Federal antitrust laws in their negotiations with health plans and health insurance issuers.
H.R.1789: To restore the inherent benefits of the market economy by repealing the Federal body of statutory law commonly referred to as "antitrust law", and for other purposes.
-- He would gut the regulatory power of Federal agencies, forcing Congress to micromanage all decisions:
H.R.1204: A bill to an Act to restore the rule of law.
DISCRIMINATION
-- He has tried to make it easier for racial and ethnic discrimination in our society:
H.R.3863: A bill to provide that the Internal Revenue Service may not implement certain proposed rules relating to the determination of whether private schools have discriminatory policies.
H.R.5842: A bill to make all Iranian Students in the United States ineligible for any form of federal aid.
H.R.4982: A bill to provide for civil rights in public schools.
-- He would propose an amendment to the Constitution to gut the Fourteenth Amendment by denying citizenship to people born here whose parents aren't already citizens "nor persons who owe permanent allegiance to the United States". That latter part could produce some serious political discrimination, especially if radicals can have their citizenship revoked:
H.J.RES.46: Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to deny United States citizenship to individuals born in the United States to parents who are neither United States citizens nor persons who owe permanent allegiance to the United States.
H.J.RES.46: Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to deny United States citizenship to individuals born in the United States to parents who are neither United States citizens nor persons who owe permanent allegiance to the United States.
H.J.RES.42: Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to deny United States citizenship to individuals born in the United States to parents who are neither United States citizens nor persons who owe permanent allegiance to the United States.
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION
-- He would limit or try to repeal various environmental protection laws and regulations, including the Clean Air Act, the Soil and Water Conservation Act, and the use of devices that protect the "bycatch" of sea life:
H.J.RES.104: To disapprove a rule issued by the Environmental Protection Agency relating to proposed revisions to the national pollutant discharge elimination system program and Federal antidegradation policy and the proposed revisions to the water quality planning and management regulations concerning total maximum daily load.
H.R.3735: To disapprove a rule requiring the use of bycatch reduction devices in the shrimp fishery of the Gulf of Mexico.
H.R.4423: To amend the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act to provide that the Gulf of Mexico red snapper fishery shall be managed in accordance with such fishery management plans, regulations, and other conservation and management as applied to that fishery on April 13, 1998.
H.R.2504: A bill to amend the Clean Air Act to postpone for one year the application of certain restrictions to areas which have failed to attain national ambient air quality standards and to delay for one year the date required for adoption and submission of State implementation plans applicable to these areas, and for other purposes.
H.R.7079: A bill to repeal the Soil and Water Conservation Act of 1977.
H.R.7245: A bill to amend section 404 of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act to restrict the jurisdiction of the United States over the discharge of dredged or fill material to discharges into waters which are navigable and for other purposes.
Ron Paul also has a lot of bills relating to the shrimp industry and trying to block competition. Maybe he's in their pocket?
-- He would promote offshore oil-drilling, the construction of more refineries, coal-mining on Federal lands, and block conservation measures. This would further threaten our coastal and internal environments, and further trap our economy in fossil-fuel dependency:
H.R.2415: To reduce the price of gasoline by allowing for offshore drilling, eliminating Federal obstacles to constructing refineries and providing incentives for investment in refineries, suspending Federal fuel taxes when gasoline prices reach a benchmark amount, and promoting free trade.
H.R.4004: To reduce the price of gasoline by allowing for offshore drilling, eliminating Federal obstacles to constructing refineries and providing incentives for investment in refineries, suspending Federal fuel taxes when gasoline prices reach a benchmark amount, and promoting free trade.
H.R.393: A bill to amend section 404 of the Federal Water Pollution Control Act to restrict the jurisdiction of the United States over discharge of dredged or fill material to discharges into waters which are navigable and for other purposes.
H.R.4639: A bill to repeal all Federal regulations and taxes on the production of fuel.
H.R.5293: A bill to prohibit the imposition of unreasonable severance taxes or fees on coal or lignite mined from Federal lands.
H.R.6936: A bill to prohibit the Secretary of Energy from promulgating any federal emergency energy conservation plan which would restrict recreational boating.
-- He has fought ratification of the Law of the Sea. As President would he "un-sign" it? [More here.]
H.CON.RES.56: Expressing the sense of the Congress that the United States should not ratify the Law of the Sea Treaty.
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND MILITARY ISSUES
-- This "champion of peace" wanted to prohibit the dismantling of ICBM silos in the U.S.:
H.R.1665: To prohibit the destruction during fiscal year 2002 of intercontinental ballistic missile silos in the United States.
H.R.3769: To prohibit the destruction during fiscal year 2001 of intercontinental ballistic missile silos in the United States.
-- He would continue U.S. opposition to the International Criminal Court, despite the usefulness of this body for prosecuting war-crimes that are not challenged domestically.
H.R.1154: To provide that the International Criminal Court is not valid with respect to the United States, and for other purposes.
H.AMDT.480 (A010): An amendment numbered 9 printed in part A of House Report 107-450 to prohibit funds authorized in the bill from being used to assist, cooperate with, or provide any support to the International Criminal Court.
H.R.4169: To provide that the International Criminal Court is not valid with respect to the United States, and for other purposes.
H.CON.RES.23: Expressing the sense of the Congress that President George W. Bush should declare to all nations that the United States does not intend to assent to or ratify the International Criminal Court Treaty, also referred to as the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, and the signature of former President Clinton to that treaty should not be construed otherwise.
H.RES.416: Expressing the sense of the Congress regarding the International Criminal Court.
-- He has promoted the Bricker Amendment to the Constitution, and otherwise sought limit the protections of international law. He would also prohibit U.S. courts from citing foreign laws or policies (other than English ones) in their decisions:
H.J.RES.1028: A resolution proposing the Bricker amendment to the Constitution of the United States relative to force and effect of treaties and executive agreements.
H.J.RES.492: A joint resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relative to force and effect of treaties and Executive agreements.
H.CON.RES.49: Expressing the sense of Congress that the Treaty Power of the President does not extend beyond the enumerated powers of the Federal Government, but are limited by the Constitution, and any exercise of such Executive Power inconsistent with the Constitution shall be of no legal force or effect.
H.R.4118: To ensure that the courts interpret the Constitution in the manner that the Framers intended.
H.R.1658: To ensure that the courts interpret the Constitution in the manner that the Framers intended.
-- He would end U.S. participation in the United Nations. Failing that he would prohibit or severely curtail appropriations for U.S. payments to the U.N. or its affiliated agencies. Please note that isolationism is not the same as anti-imperialism:
H.R.1146: To end membership of the United States in the United Nations.
H.R.1146: To end membership of the United States in the United Nations.
H.AMDT.285 (A038): An amendment numbered 11 printed in the Congressional Record to prohibit use of funds in the bill to pay any United States contribution to the United Nations or any affiliated agency of the United Nations
H.R.1146: To end membership of the United States in the United Nations.
H.AMDT.190 (A024): Amendment sought to prohibit use of funds for any U.S. contribution to the UN or any affiliated agency of the UN.
H.AMDT.191 (A025): Amendment sought to prohibit use of funds for use toward any U.S. contribution for UN peacekeeping operations.
H.R.1146: To end membership of the United States in the United Nations.
H.AMDT.306 (A006): Amendment sought to eliminate the authorization of funding for any United Nations program.
H.R.1146: To end membership of the United States in the United Nations.
H.AMDT.138 (A010): Amendment sought to provide for the withdrawal of the United States from the United Nations.
H.R.1146: To provide for complete withdrawal of the United States from the United Nations.
H.R.3890: A bill to limit United States contributions to the United Nations.
H.R.3891: A bill to terminate all participation by the United States in the United Nations, and to remove all privileges, exemptions, and immunities of the United Nations.
H.R.6358: A bill to limit United States contributions to the United Nations.
H.R.14788: A bill to limit U.S. contributions to the United Nations.
-- Not having any success there, he has worked to block U.S. membership in the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization:
H.CON.RES.132: Expressing the sense of the Congress that the United States should formally withdraw its membership from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
H.CON.RES.4: Expressing the sense of the Congress that the United States should not rejoin the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization.
H.CON.RES.443: Expressing the sense of the Congress that the United States should formally withdraw its membership from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
H.CON.RES.489: Expressing the sense of the Congress that the United States should not rejoin the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
-- Would he pull the U.S. out of the ABM Treaty?
H.J.RES.566: A joint resolution withdrawing the United States of America from the Treaty on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems, and the Interim Agreement Protocol, and Agreed Interpretations of the Treaty, signed of May 26, 1972.
-- Oh, but he would "protect" U.S. soldiers from wearing any insignia of another country or the U.N.
H.R.4797: To protect America's citizen soldiers.
-- Would he try to re-establish U.S. "sovereignty" over the Panama Canal? As I recall, the Canal Treaty was a major concern of the far Right back in the 1970's and 1980's:
H.CON.RES.231: Expressing the sense of the Congress that the Panama Canal and the Panama Canal Zone should be considered to be the sovereign territory of the United States.
H.RES.1410: A resolution in support of continued undiluted U.S. sovereignty and jurisdiction over the U.S.-owned Canal Zone on the Isthmus of Panama.
H.R.2522: A bill to prohibit the use of any United States funds to implement the Panama Canal Treaty of 1977 unless the use of those funds for that purpose is hereafter expressly provided for by the Congress and to prohibit the transfer to the Republic of Panama any territory or other property of the United States in the Canal Zone unless the Congress hereafter enacts legislation which expressly authorizes such transfer.
A GUN FREE-FOR-ALL
-- He would allow more guns in schools and National Parks, repeal requirements for background checks and gun-locks, use Federal authority to nullify state laws regarding concealed weapons, and eliminate many other regulations including prohibitions on gun possession by minors, recent felons, fugitives, addicts, and domestic abusers, and prohibitions relating to semiautomatic weapons:
H.R.2424: To repeal the Gun-Free School Zones Act of 1990 and amendments to that Act.
H.R.1897: To protect the second amendment rights of individuals to carry firearms in units of the National Park System, and for other purposes.
H. R. 1096: To restore the second amendment rights of all Americans.
H.R.1703: To restore the second amendment rights of all Americans.
H.R.3125: To protect the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution.
H.R.153: To restore the second amendment rights of all Americans.
H.R.1762: To restore the second amendment rights of all Americans.
H.R.1179: To restore the second amendment rights of all Americans.
H.R.407: To amend title 18, United States Code, to provide for reciprocity in regard to the manner in which nonresidents of a State may carry certain concealed firearms in that State.
H.R.2721: To restore the Second Amendment rights of all Americans.
H.R.2722: To amend title 18, United States Code, to provide for reciprocity in regard to the manner in which nonresidents of a State may carry certain concealed firearms in the State.
H.R.1147: To repeal the prohibitions relating to semiautomatic firearms and large capacity ammunition feeding devices.
H.R.3892: A bill to repeal the Gun Control Act of 1968.
H.R.3892: A bill to repeal the Gun Control Act of 1968.
H.R.2311 A bill to repeal the Gun Control Act of 1968.
H.R.14768: A bill to repeal the Gun Control Act of 1968.
EDUCATION POLICY
-- Speaking of schools, he would weaken educational standards by using Federal power to interfere with states improving their standards for teacher certification:
H.R.966: To prohibit the Federal Government from planning, developing, implementing, or administering any national teacher test or method of certification and from withholding funds from States or local educational agencies that fail to adopt a specific method of teacher certification.
H.R.1706: To prohibit the Federal Government from planning, developing, implementing, or administering any national teacher test or method of certification and from withholding funds from States or local educational agencies that fail to adopt a specific method of teacher certification.
H.R.4653: A bill to prohibit the payment of Federal Education assistance in States which require the licensing or certification of private schools or private school teachers.
TAX POLICY
-- He wants to dramatically reduce the tax obligations of people who make inordinately high incomes and who inherit large fortunes they did not earn. Specifically, this includes attempts to repeal the estate tax, and to apply one tax rate to all income levels.
H.J.RES.23: Proposing an amendment the Constitution of the United States relative to abolishing personal income, estate, and gift taxes and prohibiting the United States Government from engaging in business in competition with its citizens.
H.J.RES.14: Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relative to abolishing personal income, estate, and gift taxes and prohibiting the United States Government from engaging in business in competition with its citizens.
H.J.RES.15: Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relative to abolishing personal income, estate, and gift taxes and prohibiting the United States Government from engaging in business in competition with its citizens.
H.J.RES.45: Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relative to abolishing personal income, estate, and gift taxes and prohibiting the United States Government from engaging in the business in competition with its citizens.
H.J.RES.81: Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relative to abolishing personal income, estate, and gift taxes and prohibiting the United States Government from engaging in business in competition with its citizens.
H.J.RES.116: Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relative to abolishing personal income, estate, and gift taxes and prohibiting the United States Government from engaging in business in competition with its citizens.
H.R.5484: A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 to provide for the taxation of certain income at the flat rate of 10 percent and to repeal the estate tax.
H.R.2137: A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 to provide that a 10-percent income tax rate shall apply to all individuals, and to repeal all deductions, credits, and exclusions for individuals other than an exemption of $10,000.
H.R.1664: A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 to provide that a 10-percent income tax rate shall apply to all individuals and to increase the deduction for personal exemptions from $1,000 to $2,500.
H.J.RES.23: A joint resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relative to abolishing personal income, estate, and gift taxes and prohibiting the United States Government from engaging in business in competition with its citizens.
H.R.6352: A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 to provide that a 10 percent income tax rate shall apply to all individuals, and to repeal all deductions, credits, and exclusions for individuals other than an exemption of $10,000.
H.R.4569: A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 to repeal the estate and gift taxes and the tax on generation-skipping transfers.
H.R.15619: A bill to repeal the estate tax.
-- And short of that he wants us to pay our income taxes every month, and not use withholding.
H.R.1364: To restore to taxpayers awareness of the true cost of government by eliminating the withholding of income taxes by employers and requiring individuals to pay income taxes in monthly installments, and for other purposes.
H.R.4855: To restore to taxpayers awareness of the true cost of government by eliminating the withholding of income taxes by employers and requiring individuals to pay income taxes in monthly installments, and for other purposes.
Finally, the even weirder parts of Ron Paul's record:
GOLD! GOLD! GOLD!
-- What is his obsession with gold, and does this make for sound economic policy?
H.R.3101: To amend title 5, United States Code, to provide for the establishment of a precious metals investment option in the Thrift Savings Fund.
H.R.3732: To amend title 31, United States Code, to limit the use by the President and the Secretary of the Treasury of the Exchange Stabilization Fund to buy or sell gold without congressional approval, and for other purposes.
H.R.4226: A bill to provide for the minting of gold coins and silver coins by the United States.
H.R.1662: A bill to provide for the minting of American Gold Eagle coins pursuant to Article 1, section 8 of the Constitution of the United States.
H.R.1663: A bill to provide for the minting of American Gold Eagle coins pursuant to Article 1, section 8 of the Constitution of the United States.
H.R.878: A bill to execute Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution.
H.R.391: A bill to repeal the privilege of banks to create money.
H.R.3862: A bill to provide for a full assay, inventory, and audit of the gold reserves of the United States, and for other purposes.
H.R.3349: A bill to direct the Secretary of the Treasury to strike and sell gold medallions to the general public.
H.R.2658: A bill to amend the Federal Reserve Act to terminate the authority of the Secretary of the Treasury to require the delivery of gold to the Treasurer of the United States, which shall be known as The Gold Ownership Act of 1979.
H.R.5605: A bill to amend the Trading with the Enemy Act.
H.R.5658: A bill to make Federal Reserve Notes and United States Notes redeemable in gold.
H.R.6217: A bill to prohibit the sale of gold bullion by any agency of the United States unless specifically authorized by law.
H.R.6297: A bill to direct the Secretary of the Treasury to strike and sell gold medallions to the general public.
H.R.7874: A bill to repeal the privilege of banks to create money.
H.R.6054: A bill to provide for the minting of the American Eagle gold coin pursuant to article I, section 8 of the Constitution of the United States.
-- He might even try to get rid of the Federal Reserve, which has long been a bogeyman of the far right:
H.R.2778: To abolish the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal reserve banks, to repeal the Federal Reserve Act, and for other purposes.
H.R.5356: To abolish the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal reserve banks, to repeal the Federal Reserve Act, and for other purposes.
H.R.1148: To abolish the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Federal reserve banks, to repeal the Federal Reserve Act, and for other purposes.
H.R.875: A bill to repeal the Federal Reserve Act.
H.R.876: A bill to repeal section 105(b) of the Monetary Control Act of 1980.
H.R.4652: A bill to provide that no officer or employee of the United States shall change the design of Federal reserve notes unless such change is specifically authorized by Federal law.
-- Does he want to abandon the dollar and set up 50 separate state currencies? Does that even make sense?
H.R.2779: To repeal section 5103 of title 31, United States Code.
H.R.3931: A bill to amend the Coinage Act of 1965 to provide that coins and currencies of the United States, including Federal Reserve notes and circulating notes of Federal Reserve banks and national banking associations, shall be legal tender only for the payment of Federal taxes, duties and dues.
OMNIBUS REACTIONARY
-- He has favored all manner of other right-wing policies, in the following case with a single bill, which includes provisions for such things as supporting corporal punishment, requiring that young people seeking reproductive care have their parents notified, allowing churches and religious organizations that run "public" services to discriminate against potential clients, and moving us back to school segregation.
H.R.7955: A bill to strengthen the American family and promote the virtues of family life.
Fortunately, Ron Paul rarely gets anywhere with his proposals. I doubt there would be many progressives, or even many liberals, who would like where this man comes from politically, or where he wants to take us.
Remembrance of the Fascists may give rise to dangerous insights... Herbert Marcuse
Posts: 3909 | Location: California, Bay Area | Registered: 31 October 2004
Paul IS correct abotu Iran - He's just dead wrong about almost everything that has to do with People, the Commons, or Democracy. Paul is a candidate for the Me rather than the Us community--dave42
Perhaps. Perhaps, Ron Paul is operating, in 'Henry David Thoreau fashion', under the rather 'American precept' that 'an informed anarchy' is the best set-up for a 'cooperative union'--it's a peculiarly 'American' perspective on what 'individuals' and 'groups' and 'individuals in groups' could mean....
With that said, of course, I don't believe we can see such a 'vision' realized in today's world of 'collective powers other than government' which can hold an 'Us-influence', or 'power', that may be no good for 'Me'--or 'Us', in any other way 'Us' can mean.....
While Antifascist is pointing out some pertinent problems that Paul contains in his 'libertarian position' that look as much like the 'neo-cons' as any real 'Constitutional adherent emphasizing rights', the point I was making with Social Security is regardless of Paul's 'stand' on it--the 'national debt' will make it 'insolvent' when it finally comes down to this 'debt paying the piper'. I'm not saying I like Paul's answer to this problem--but, I am saying that this problem has the capacity to be unworkable once the 'governmental debt' becomes a 'deterrent' to the 'market economy'--and the only reason why I don't think it's that way right now is 'this stay on the debt' being suspended by the 'present war on terrorism'--a massive 'deficit-spending' that wouldn't be 'tolerated' by the 'markets' were the national debt being escalated by any other reason than 'war' (which means 'all the governmental deficit spending goes to war-related corporations'). And, once 'war' is no longer able to be used as that 'excuse', then you will be left with the issue that the 'Social Security benefits'--like all 'governmental entitlements'--are now 'draining an already defunct appropriations-pool' drained by the 'rising national debt'--and 'pay-back' is going to be hell. And, as far as I can tell, that doesn't seem to be a problem already just (and ONLY) because we are 'paying hit men' to 'distract us' from that realization. Once we don't have the money to 'pay them', we'll be left with not enough money to 'pay anyone else'.
What will we do then? I don't have the answer-but, part of 'providing an answer' is 'adequately define the problem'....
And, we'll see what kind of an 'Us' we have when all these 'Me's' don't get the benefits that were promised...and all the other 'Me's' don't see any benefit to them at all for paying for it now....
Posts: 841 | Location: Texas | Registered: 07 May 2007
One of Ron Paul’s selling points as a presidential candidate is his willingness to reject Republican orthodoxy. As the theory goes, the modern-day GOP has been taken over by neocons and religious extremists, and Paul’s libertarian-brand conservatism rejects both. Given that most liberals have a similar disdain for the Podhoretz and Dobson crowds, Paul has picked up a few fans on the left, too.
But what I did not realize is that when it comes to the religious right’s theocratic worldview, Paul is surprisingly in line with TV preachers like Pat Robertson. An alert reader emailed me this Ron Paul commentary from December 2003, in which the Texas Republican laments “the ongoing war against religion” in general, and Christianity in specific.
Through perverse court decisions and years of cultural indoctrination, the elitist, secular Left has managed to convince many in our nation that religion must be driven from public view. The justification is always that someone, somewhere, might possibly be offended or feel uncomfortable living in the midst of a largely Christian society, so all must yield to the fragile sensibilities of the few. The ultimate goal of the anti-religious elites is to transform America into a completely secular nation, a nation that is legally and culturally biased against Christianity.
What’s the difference between this analysis and the nonsense on The 700 Club? Slightly better writing, maybe, but the worldview is identical. Indeed, Paul is even on the same page as Bill O’Reilly when it comes to the absurd “war on Christmas.”
Christmas pageants and plays, including Handel’s Messiah, have been banned from schools and community halls. Nativity scenes have been ordered removed from town squares, and even criticized as offensive when placed on private church lawns. Office Christmas parties have become taboo, replaced by colorless seasonal parties to ensure no employees feel threatened by a “hostile environment.” … [T]he once commonplace refrain of “Merry Christmas” has been replaced by the vague, ubiquitous “Happy Holidays.” But what holiday? Is Christmas some kind of secret, a word that cannot be uttered in public? Why have we allowed the secularists to intimidate us into downplaying our most cherished and meaningful Christian celebration?
I can appreciate the fact that Paul supporters get annoyed when critics are dismissive of his ideas when it comes to eliminating most of the federal government, overhauling the modern foreign-policy apparatus, and eliminating the Federal Reserve. But are these same fans — most of whom ostensibly support church-state separation — equally willing to support Paul’s Falwell-like rhetoric on “protecting” Christianity from the nefarious “secularists”?
Indeed, given what I’ve seen of Paul in the Republican debates, I’m genuinely surprised at his penchant for religious right rhetoric. Usually, libertarians aren’t terribly concerned with whether some local city hall has a Nativity scene or not. Whether some clerk at the mall mentions Christmas or not is hardly the concern of members of Congress. The strength of a religious tradition will rise or fall in the free market of ideas, right?
Except Paul, at least as recently as four years ago, was taking a very different approach, publishing a thought piece that might as well have come from Focus on the Family.
The piece added:
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.
Seriously? Ron Paul continues to cite the U.S. Constitution has the single most important guide for the nation, and he believes it’s “replete with references to God” — despite the fact that the Constitution doesn’t mention God or Christianity at all? Has Paul even read the Constitution?... [emphasis added]
Inserted from <The Carpetbagger Report>
Anyone who has been reading here for any length of time knows that I am no secularist, and that my Christian faith is an important part of my life. However, I strongly support the establishment clause of the First Amendment, because I don't want any religious group making their piety codes part of our laws, and more than I want government imposing itself into my faith.
I keep hearing that Ron Paul is the progressive answer for those not satisfied with the Democratic field of candidates, and while I agree with his foreign policy, I have demonstrated that, socially, he's just another damn religious-right theocon, not worthy of consideration by any serious progressive.
Posts: 16 | Location: Northern IL | Registered: 13 June 2006
See original article for live links to supporting documents and articles.
quote:
The dark side of the 'Paul Phenomenon' Wednesday, November 14, 2007 -- by Dave On Saturday, Ron Paul held a campaign rally in Philadelphia. As Atrios noticed, it attracted a large crowd, most of them quite vocal about ending the Iraq war. But if you looked carefully, there was also an element (most them also antiwar) that's become something of a fixture at Ron Paul rallies: skinheads, neo-Nazis, militiamen, and various stripes of right-wing extremists.
The photographer Isis was there and captured some of this, including the shot above. That's Keith Carney of the Keystone State Skinheads on the left, posing with an unidentified Stormfront friend. Meanwhile, over at Stormfront, the event sparked a flurry of posts urging nonstop Paul support. And as One People's Project noticed, even one of the rally's speakers, a woman named Debbie Hopper, has a distinguished background in far-right activism, including having helped organize a tribute to Sam Francis.
Mike Flugennock made a video about it all, featuring a revealing encounter between Darryl of One People's Project and the skinheads, who were all toting Ron Paul signs and wearing his stickers and buttons: Ron Paul Speech
What does this all mean? Does it mean Ron Paul is fronting for fascists? Does it mean he's a racist? Or is it something more complex, but equally disturbing?
Every presidential candidate attracts cranks, racists, kooks, conspiracy theorists, radicals of various stripes, and assorted fringe actors to their campaigns -- some more than others. Generally speaking, it's not worth paying a lot of attention to, because their numbers typically are quite small, and most of those involved are idiosyncratic -- that is, they only coincidentally reflect on the candidate themselves, if at all. They're irrelevant.
But people who track the activities of the far right -- the white supremacists, neo-Nazis, Patriots/militiamen, "Freemen"/"constitutionalists", and anti-abortion, anti-tax, and anti-gay radicals -- do pay attention to how they vote: where their money and support goes, and why. It's important to track this because it's about watching who they empower, and who's empowering them, and to what extent this is occurring.
In the 1980s and early '90s, they tended to divide their votes among a menu of various fringe candidates (David Duke, Bo Gritz), mostly under the banner of the Populist Party, and "mainstream" third-party candidates like Ross Perot and Patrick Buchanan. A lot of them, however, abandoned third parties altogether after the 2000 election, when Buchanan betrayed them by choosing a black woman as his running mate -- and many of them simply began voting Republican.
Of course, linking Bush -- who has never publicly appeared before, or expressly courted, such groups -- to their hateful activities would indeed be "guilt by association." Yet it's also dishonest to ignore the reality that movement conservativism made itself increasingly more hospitable to these blocs. As I noted in that piece, some of this had to do with gestures George W. Bush made throughout his campaign:
These failures were symptomatic of a campaign that made multiple gestures of conciliation to a variety of extreme right-wing groups. These ranged from the neo-Confederates to whom Bush's campaign made its most obvious appeals in the South Carolina primary to his speaking appearance at Bob Jones University. Bush and his GOP cohorts continued to make a whole host of other gestures to other extremist components: attacking affirmative action, kneecapping the United Nations, and gutting hate-crimes laws.
The result was that white supremacists and other right-wing extremists came to identify politically with George W. Bush more than any other mainstream Republican politician in memory. This was embodied by the endorsement of Bush's candidacy by a range of white supremacists, including David Duke, Don Black and Matthew Hale of the World Church of the Creator.
Of course, this support was so small as to be insignificant numerically speaking, though its influence and reach were another matter entirely. Still, in reality, far-right activists voted for Bush more as a desultory gesture than anything else. Which is why, of course, they have now fled him in large numbers, now that his presidency has proven to be such a manifest catastrophe.
Well, the far right has always been fond of tapping into threads of national discontent -- it's how they've survived all these years, really -- which is why they have made a living the past generation whipping up anti-government sentiment, exploiting the farm crisis, gun control, abortion, education, and a whole menu of other issues along the way. More recently, immigration has been their chief entree to the mainstream, and now they have jumped on the anti-Iraq war bandwagon.
Ron Paul's presidential candidacy has been the focal point for this, and it has been striking, not to mention disturbing, to observe the unanimity with which the far right has been coalescing behind Paul's candidacy. And the support (unlike that for either Buchanan or Perot) has not been merely avid, it's perfervid.
Virtually every far-right entity -- neo-Nazis, white supremacists, militias, constitutionalists, Minutemen, nativists, you name it -- that I've been monitoring for the past decade or more is lining up behind Paul. I've checked with other human-rights observers, and they're seeing the same thing. Ron Paul, rather quietly and under the radar, has managed to unite nearly the entire radical right behind him.
And it's not likely, even, that this is so much by design as by nature. It's a natural outgrowth of who Ron Paul is. Yet the scope of this coalescence of the far right is unprecedented. Certainly no other presidential candidate in my memory -- except perhaps the early George Wallace -- has energized and drawn the ardent support from the far right the way Ron Paui has.
Certainly, the Philadelphia event was far from unique. White supremacists from a variety of organizations -- the NSM, Stormfront, National Vanguard, WAR, Hammerskins -- have been outspoken and unapologetic supporters of Paul, and have come out to rally for him at a number of different campaign appearances. For example, at a Paul rally in August in New Jersey, a sizeable number of Stormfronters showed up. Indeed, a quick Google of Stormfront's site for "Ron Paul" gives you a clear idea just how involved they are: 789,000 links.
If you do a video Google for "Ron Paul" and "New World Order", you get 309 hits, including this one: Right Wing Bunkum
Carl Klang was a fixture on the militia K-ration-dinner circuit in the 1990s, being the guy who would come out onstage and sing a few "patriotic" songs like "Watch Out for Martial Law" and "Seventeen Little Children". Considering that Paul was once a fixture on the same circuit, they have even shared the stage back then.
And that, of course, is a large part of the reasons why talking about the radical-right bloc's support for Ron Paul's candidacy isn't "guilt by association," which by definition entails an irrelevant association.
Let's use the new neo-Nazi affinity for the antiwar movement as an illustrative example here. Smearing one by linking them to the other is in fact "guilt by association," because the association is irrelevant.
The skins' reasons for opposing the war are, in fact, wholly different from those of the much larger antiwar left, who are opposed largely on humanitarian grounds; the far right, however, opposes the war because it's perceived to be fought on behalf of Israel and the Jews -- which is why, when you hear them talk about "neocons", you know that they are in fact using it as a code word for "Jew." So the association, such as it is (it seems largely to occur at Paul events) is purely coincidental, accidental, a nonsequitur, and largely irrelevant (though it hopefully gives antiwar liberals pause about the way they talk about Israeli influence in the matter).
However, the fact that they do so in the name of supporting Ron Paul is neither merely accidental nor irrelevant. After all, Paul himself is inclined to rail against "the Israel lobby" and "the neocons". But that's only scratching the surface of his appeal to this sector. Unlike the antiwar left, there's more than an abundance of common ground between Ron Paul and the far right.
Paul's associations with the radical right, in fact, are fully relevant, on three levels:
1) He has a fully documented history of actively seeking their support.
2) His ideological framework -- fighting "the New World Order," eliminating the Fed, the IRS, and most federal agencies, getting us out of the U.N., ending all gun controls, reinstating the gold standard -- meshes neatly with theirs.
3) The organizations with whom he's associated are not benign, nor merely even "controversial", but are truly noxious elements that no responsible politician should be seen endorsing: racists, xenophobes, conspiracists, and frauds. This isn't the Rose Garden Society we're talking about here, or even the NRA.
As I recently pointed out:
if you run through the broad array of kooky theories about the federal government promoted on the far right, you can find any number of Ron Paul's positions -- particularly regarding the gold standard, the Federal Reserve, the IRS, and the United Nations -- floating about there. Notably, Paul also played a significant role in Congress' ongoing failure to confront the growing problem of conspiracy-driven tax protests by diverting the blame to the IRS itself.
But that's who Ron Paul is -- a "constitutionalist" who deals in conspiracy theories and extremist anti-government beliefs. It's who he always has been, and who he is now. It isn't just an accident that Paul very recently spoke to a group with troubling racial ties, or that he attended a Patriot Network banquet in his honor in 2004, or that he gave an interview to a conspiracist magazine the same year. Hell, he's been operating within those same circles since 1985.
These are the first two pages of a 35-page mini-book that Ron Paul published in 1988 titled "World Money, World Banking, and World Government: A Special Report from the Ron Paul Investment Letter". It looks at the "threat" of the Trilateral Commission and the "European Currency Unit", which happened to be the far right's big bogeyman of the time. (Ever notice how their dire warnings of imminent doom never quite pan out? Of course, Ron Paul also has a long history of associating with one of the preeminent promoters of the most spectacular case of right-conspiracy failure, namely, the Y2K hysteria: Gary North.)
And it's not as though he's changed a lot. Just three years ago, he gave a long, rambling interview to Conspiracy Planet discussing the "New World Order," which included (among many gems) the following exchange at the open:
First question: do you believe there are secret forces at work that are attempting to dismantle the Constitution and the Bill of Rights?
Ron Paul: I don't know what the best word is, but secret is pretty good. They're certainly not known to a lot of people; it's actually what their doing. But then again, it's not absolute secrecy. If you look around you can usually get the information. There was a time when nobody even knew who was a member of the CFR or the Trilateral Commission. I think it's a bad sign that they're not as secret as they used to be. They're bolder now. But there is an agenda.
It's also worth remembering, of course, that the bulk of the rest of much of Paul's radical agenda, such as dismantling the Federal Reserve, is similarly founded in old-fashioned right-wing bunkum.
This is why, as Bruce Miller elegantly explains, anyone who's been exposed to these folks for any length of time understand clearly just who Ron Paul is and where he's coming from. His "libertarianism" is more of a malleable veneer over old-style Bircherite conservatism than anything genuine.
So this is why it's not only relevant, but important, to talk about the kind of supporters Ron Paul is gathering behind him. Andrew Sullivan gets this half right when he notes, "I tend to place greater emphasis on loons and hate-mongers that candidates actively seek out." But because he neglects to dig deeper and find out just to what extent Paul has in fact sought out the "loons and hate-mongers," he then blithely assumes that only example of this is Paul's refusal to return a $500 donation from Stormfront's Don Black and dismisses it as "guilt by association" and a "smear." (For a nastier take on all this, you can also check out Justin Raimondo's attack on me today.)
But even that example is more relevant than Sullivan and Paul's apologists will admit. As Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates put it when I chatted with him about this today: "Those neo-Nazis have a First Amendment right to endorse Ron Paul, but Ron Paul has a moral obligation to disavow that donation."
He added: "There's two issues: Why would anyone have to ask Ron Paul to disassociate himself from the endorsement of neo-Nazis? And the second is that when they did ask him, his silence spoke volumes about his values. You know, 'I don't enjoy the endorsement of neo-Nazis' -- how hard is that to say? And why hasn't he refunded it? It's not like this is a gray area."
So I can't help largely agreeing, but wondering if there isn't a certain naivete involved, when Glenn Greenwald writes, in defense of Paul:
As the debates of 2002 should have proved rather conclusively, the arguments that are deemed to be the province of the weirdos and losers may actually be the ideas that are right. They at least deserve an honest airing, especially in a presidential campaign with as much at stake as this one.
That's all very good and very true, but I think some well-informed discretion about what arguments we engage is also needed. There is, after all, a reason that the arguments from such sectors as the radical right are (fortunately) held by only a small number of people: They are either founded on false information and bizarre distortions, or they're simply hateful and vicious, and often both.
Otherwise, what you'll often find being woven into the national conversation -- besides truly fringe ideas like eliminating the Fed and abolishing the IRS, as well as "New World Order" theories -- is the kind of ideology that spews from the fringe of Ron Paul's more rabid right-wing followers. This happens not only in public view, but also on the ground.
Take, for example, the Stormfront thread discussing the Philly rally, wherein a poster named "CassandraAdams" discussed meeting a woman who fled the Brown Peril in Arizona and was at the Paul rally, but who apparently fled when Cassandra started talking about defending the white race. She concluded:
The reason I've written this is that I am actually despairing, this morning, over the Fate of my Race. How can we survive, when the millions of victims of other Races refuse to acknowledge the FACT of the onslaught against us?
A charmer named "Wolfsnarl" responded:
If we can get them to defend their race without them actively thinking they are doing so in those terms-through mainstream anti-immigration groups like NumbersUSA or Ron Paul activism for example. After all, how many foot soldiers of the jewish/communist takeover actively thought of themselves as communists or whatever?
This is why they're out in large numbers for Ron Paul: they see his candidacy as a real opportunity to advance their agenda -- and they have very good reasons for believing that. It's a fertile ground for them, and they know it.
Which should be reason for the rest of us -- even those who appreciate Paul's ardent antiwar position, or who see him as potentially a GOP stalking horse -- to pause before applauding his rise.
Remembrance of the Fascists may give rise to dangerous insights... Herbert Marcuse
Posts: 3909 | Location: California, Bay Area | Registered: 31 October 2004
I think it is a mistake not to consider what 'individual rights' mean in the context of globalization. 'Comparing procedural solutions' without getting down to the very 'motives and causes of such procedures' is just masking the issue.
Plus, I noticed that none of you addressed the problem that I believe will occur once the 'distraction of war' is not present--namely, the 'Me's' guaranteed 'entitlements' from the government are going to run squarely into the 'Me's' that will see no benefit to themselves for paying for other people's entitlements. How do you of the 'Us' persuasion plan on rectifying that situation?
Posts: 841 | Location: Texas | Registered: 07 May 2007
Legal except for the illegal part November 19, 2007 -- by Dave I caught a lot of flack from the Ron Paul contingent for pointing out that the people who were about to distribute "Ron Paul dollars" had just been busted by the FBI. Some commenters complained that there was nothing illegal about minting your own coins if you choose -- though of course others pointed out that this is true only if you don't make them look like legal tender.
It's also somewhat irrelevant if you're selling them as part of a pyramid scheme, and using the business for illegal money laundering.
It's apparent that this, in fact, was what the FBI busted the "Liberty Dollar" operators for. The search warrant and supporting FBI affidavit [PDF file] spells this out. For instance, there's the actual profit picture:
The marketing system NORFED operates to sell the currency is a multi-level marketing scheme. The scheme gives NORFED, RCOs, and Associates a profit for selling the ALDs into circulation. When the ALD reached the point of being unprofitable, NORFED conducted a "move up" of the currency. In 1998, the ALD currency was minted using a $10.00 base, meaning that a $10.000 ALD coin, eDollar, or warehouse receipt was backed by one troy ounce of silver. In November of 2005, the thirty (30) day moving average of the spot price of silver reached the "move up point" set by the NORFED. NORFED recalled all of the $10.00 base coins and warehouse receipts and "re-minted" the currency as a $20.00 base currency. This change made what the day prior had been a $10.00 denomination ALD coin, warehouse receipt, or eDollar backed by one troy ounce of silver, a re-minted re-issued $20 denomination coin. This instantly doubled the value of the currency. The "move up" left the silver and gold holdings at the same level as they were at the $10.00 base. Thus the value of the entire currency was doubled without changing the holdings at all. The other effect of the "move up" was a tremendous increase in profits for NORFED, RCOs and Associates.
Other parts of the affidavit detail how this operated, as well as how the business was used to launder money.
We'll see how all this plays out in court, but it's clear the FBI evidence is neither thin nor the prosecution mere persecution. From the outside, NORFED always looked like yet another right-wing scam (a la the Freemen and countless others, especially tax scams), and now it seems fairly evident it indeed was.
I guess that raises a secondary but legitimate question: Did Ron Paul enter into an agreement with these guys to use his image on their coins? And if he did, what does that say about his judgment?
Remembrance of the Fascists may give rise to dangerous insights... Herbert Marcuse
Posts: 3909 | Location: California, Bay Area | Registered: 31 October 2004
’Kos highlights a 1992 article from Ron Paul’s self-published newsletter, The Ron Paul Political Report:
Indeed, it is shocking to consider the uniformity of opinion among blacks in this country. Opinion polls consistently show that only about 5% of blacks have sensible political opinions, i.e. support the free market, individual liberty, and the end of welfare and affirmative action…. Given the inefficiencies of what D.C. laughingly calls the “criminal justice system,” I think we can safely assume that 95% of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.
If similar in-depth studies were conducted in other major cities, who doubts that similar results would be produced? We are constantly told that it is evil to be afraid of black men, but it is hardly irrational. Black men commit murders, rapes, robberies, muggings, and burglaries all out of proportion to their numbers.
Well, don't say we didn't warn you about Ron Paul's friends.
Here's American National Socialist Workers Party leader Bill White, coming out big for Paul on the far-right Vanguard News Network site on December 20:
Comrades:
I have kept quiet about the Ron Paul campaign for a while, because I didn't see any need to say anything that would cause any trouble. However, reading the latest release from his campaign spokesman, I am compelled to tell the truth about Ron Paul's extensive involvement in white nationalism.
Both Congressman Paul and his aides regularly meet with members of the Stormfront set, American Renaissance, the Institute for Historic Review, and others at the Tara Thai restaurant in Arlington, Virginia, usually on Wednesdays. This is part of a dinner that was originally organized by Pat Buchanan, Sam Francis and Joe Sobran, and has since been mostly taken over by the Council of Conservative Citizens.
I have attended these dinners, seen Paul and his aides there, and been invited to his offices in Washington to discuss policy.
For his spokesman to call white racialism a "small ideology" and claim white activists are "wasting their money" trying to influence Paul is ridiculous. Paul is a white nationalist of the Stormfront type who has always kept his racial views and his views about world Judaism quiet because of his political position.
I don't know that it is necessarily good for Paul to "expose" this. However, he really is someone with extensive ties to white nationalism and for him to deny that in the belief he will be more respectable by denying it is outrageous -- and I hate seeing people in the press who denounce racialism merely because they think it is not fashionable.
Bill White, Commander
American National Socialist Workers Party
Obviously, this isn't what Paul's supporters want to hear. (The reactions from the VNN commentors ranged from "Some one ban this piece of shit for the no outing rule" to "I know alot of white supremacist involved in the Ron Paul campaign. I wish he would not shun away from his true supporters. I will stick with him till the ened but he shouldn't act like a typical politiician" to "This mother****er needs a special bullet." Yes, the unique spelling is all their very own; follow the link above and read the threads for more holiday joy in this vein.) While White is hardly the most reliable reporter on any subject, his testament to Paul's racist credentials does tend to corroborate what Dave and I have been telling you all along: Paul's got longstanding connections to the looniest loonies on the loony right. You may not be able to hear the dog-whistle code in his speeches, but they sure as hell hear it loud and clear.
We've also been telling you that it's not just that Paul shows up for their events: he also takes their money. There's an old saying in politics that ya gotta dance with them what brung ya -- and guys like Bill White are the ones that brung Paul to Congress in the first place. On December 19, the day before White's helpful VNN endoresment, the AP caught Paul in mid-tango, this time with Stormfront.org founder Don Black:
Paul keeps donation from white supremacist
Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul has received a $500 campaign donation from a white supremacist, and the Texas congressman doesn't plan to return it, an aide said Wednesday.
Don Black, of West Palm Beach, recently made the donation, according to campaign filings. He runs a Web site called Stormfront with the motto, "White Pride World Wide." The site welcomes postings to the "Stormfront White Nationalist Community."
"Dr. Paul stands for freedom, peace, prosperity and inalienable rights. If someone with small ideologies happens to contribute money to Ron, thinking he can influence Ron in any way, he's wasted his money," Paul spokesman Jesse Benton said. "Ron is going to take the money and try to spread the message of freedom."
"And that's $500 less that this guy has to do whatever it is that he does," Benton added.
Black said he supports Paul's stance on ending the war in Iraq, securing U.S. borders and his opposition to amnesty for illegal immigrants.
"We know that he's not a white nationalist. He says he isn't and we believe him, but on the issues, there's only one choice," Black said Wednesday. "We like his stand on tight borders and opposition to a police state," Black told The Palm Beach Post earlier.
On his Web site, Black says he has been involved in "the White patriot movement for 30 years."
Evidently, when it comes to Paul's status as a white nationalist, Mr. Black and Mr. White need to get their stories straight. But anyone on the left who continues to deny that Paul has maintained long, significant, and productive relationships with racists and anti-democratic "patriots" is, at this point, living in a denial zone worthy of Donald Rumsfeld.
An update, courtesy of Brad DeLong, for the benefit of visiting commenters who are even now tuning up for another chorus of "It's not like he's a racist or anything...":
Click for larger version
UPDATE II Ron Paul's campaign spokesperson has refuted White's claims. Read about it here.
Sara Robinson has worked as an editor or columnist for several national magazines, on beats as varied as sports, travel, and the Olympics; and has contributed to over 80 computer games for EA, Lucasfilm, Disney, and many other companies.
Posts: 16 | Location: Northern IL | Registered: 13 June 2006
I’ve been searching for a reason why I like libertarians even as they drive me round-the-bend out of my mind sometimes. And on Saturday, Michael Kinsley of the Washington Post provided me that reason.
In his column titled The Church Doctrines of Pope Ron Paul - What’s wrong with libertarianism?, Kinsley described libertarianism as a movement that is so devoted to its principles that it is essentially irrelevant, but that is still vital to our political institutions. Libertarians focus so much on “free markets for everyone and everything” that they lose track of the bigger picture - things like pragmatism, or areas where the idea of personal property simply doesn’t (and can’t) apply. For example, Kinsley points out that fundamentalist libertarians (my term, not his) would reject government taxes for national defense, which is a “public good” issue that no individual should ever be allowed to decide for another. Similarly, pollution leeches across all personal property lines, and so must be addressed by governmental entities instead of nebulous “market forces.” And while I do understand (and even agree with) the right to die arguments that Kinsley rightly attributes to the libertarian impulse, he’s also right that the libertarian right to not wear a seat belt and speed runs smack into the brick wall of reality when the libertarian is involved in a fatal accident that snarls up traffic along a major highway for half the day.
Rights always come along with responsibilities, and it’s the latter part of that truism that libertarians generally forget.
But libertarians are still useful in our culture for one, very important reason - they keep us on our toes. When we’re asked why we don’t privatize the national highway system, we’re forced to answer that, as Kinsley pointed out, the inevitable result is that it’d end up being controlled by a single monopolistic corporation, and that’s functionally equivalent to the government that already owns the highways. When we’re asked why we should all have to pay for a sports stadium if we dislike sports or a major mass transit program if we live outside the metro area, libertarians force us to explain that the economic benefits of a major sports franchise and mass transit will boost the entire region’s growth, reduce pollution throughout the region, etc, so fairness requires that everyone who will benefit should help pay the costs (although sometimes the costs will outweigh the benefits, and in those situations the projects shouldn’t get any public money). And when libertarians ask why there should be regulations barring too much media consolidation in a single market, we’re forced to explain to them why monopolies are bad for them as much as everyone else.
In the process of explaining to the libertarians why they’re wrong on any given issue, the rest of us are forced to reexamine our own assumptions and opinions as they relate to the explanation. In addition, anyone else listening to the discussion learns more about the issue and comes away understanding the ideological objections and the pragmatic reasons those objections have to be rejected.
By Michael Kinsley Saturday, January 12, 2008; 12:00 AM
Libertarians get patronized a lot. Chipmunky and earnest, always pursuing logical consistency down wacky paths, they pose no real threat to the established order. But the modest success of U.S. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas in the presidential campaign entitles them to some answers to the questions they raise. They say: People should be free to do whatever they want, as long as it doesn't hurt other people. If you agree, how do you justify (let's pick just two): 1) laws that forbid private behavior, such as recreational drugs; 2) government programs that redistribute one person's money to someone else?
The libertarian perspective is useful, and undervalued. Why does the government pay farmers not to grow food? Why are medications for fatal diseases sometimes held off the market in case they aren't safe? (Compared to death?) Legislators and regulators should ask themselves far more often than they do whether some government activity or other expands freedom or contracts it.
Furthermore, democracy and majority rule are no answers. Tyranny of the majority is a constant danger. How would you like a law requiring that people with odd Social Security numbers have to give $1,000 to people with even Social Security numbers? To libertarians, much of what the government does is essentially like that.
So what is wrong with the libertarian case for extremely limited government? Economics 101 teaches some of the basic justifications for government interference in the economy. Some things, such as the cost of national defense, are "public goods." We can't each decide for ourselves how much defense we want. We have to decide that together. Then there are "externalities," which are costs (or, sometimes, benefits) that your decisions impose on me. Pollution is the classic example. Without government involvement of some sort to override our individual judgments, we will produce more pollution than most of us want.
There are "market-oriented" solutions to this problem, but there is a difference --often forgotten, especially by Republicans -- between using market forces and leaving something to the market. The point of principle is whether the government should intervene at all. How it chooses to intervene is purely pragmatic.
Libertarians have a fondness for complex arrangements to make markets work in situations where the textbooks say they can't. Hey, let's issue stamps, y'see, and use the revenues to form a corporation that sells stock to buy military equipment, then the government leases the equipment and the stockholders vote on whether to user it -- and so on. The point becomes proving a point, not economic or government efficiency.
Libertarians also have a tendency to see too many issues in terms of property rights (just as liberals, they would counter, tend to see everything in terms of discrimination and equal protection). Pollution, libertarians say, is simply theft: you are stealing my clean air. Settle it in court. This is a really terrible idea: inexpert judges, lawyers and juries using the most elaborate and expensive decision-making process known to humankind -- litigation -- to make inconsistent decisions in different cases. And usually there is no one "right" answer: There is a spectrum of acceptable answers, involving tradeoffs (dirty air versus fewer jobs, etc.) that ought to be made democratically -- that is, through government.
Sometimes libertarians end up reinventing the wheel. My favorite example is an article I read years ago advocating privatization of highways. This is a classic libertarian fantasy: government auctions off the land, private enterprise pays for construction and maintenance, tolls cover the cost, competition with other routes keeps it all efficient. And what about, um, intersections? Well, markets would recognize that it is more efficient for one company to own both roads at major intersections, and when that happened the company would have an incentive to strike the right balance between customers on each highway. And stoplights? Ultimately, the author had worked his way up to a giant monopoly that would build, own, and maintain all the roads, and charge an annual fee to people who wanted to use them. None dare call it government.
Something similar goes on when the government forbids or requires people to do something for their own good. Why shouldn't people, at least adult people, have the right to decide for themselves? Libertarian thinking has been useful, for example, in making it easier to get prescription drugs through the maze at the FDA. The Terry Shiavo case of 2005 was libertarianism's greatest moment so far, as the entire nation rose up in defense of her right to die.
The trouble here is that libertarians tend to analogize everything to a right to die. If you have the right to end your own life, you must have the right to do anything else you wish, short of that. If you're allowed to shoot yourself through the head, why aren't you allowed to drive without a seat belt?
The answer is that it's a bad analogy. When you drive without a seat belt, you are not motivated by a desire to die, or even a desire to take a small risk of dying. Why should your motive matter? Because your death -- especially your death in a car crash -- does impose externalities on others. I would pay good money not to have to see your bloody carcass lying beside the highway, or endure the traffic jam, or pay the emergency room costs. A serious right like the right to die may be worth the cost, while a right to be careless or irresponsible is not.
Llibertarians are quick to see hidden costs of ignoring libertarian principles and slow to see such costs in adhering to them. For example, Tucker Carlson reports in the Dec. 31 New Republic that Ron Paul wants to end the federal ban on unpasteurized milk. No one should want to drink unpasteurized milk, and almost no one does. Paul himself doesn't. But it bothers him that the government tells people they cannot do something they shouldn't do.Libertarians would say that if most people want pasteurized milk, the market will supply it. Firms will emerge to certify that milk has been pasteurized. These firms will compete, keeping them honest.
So yes, a Rube Goldberg contraption of capitalism could replace a straightforward government regulation. But what if you aren't interested in turning your grocery shopping into an ideological adventure? All that is lost by letting the government take care of it is the right of a few idiots to be idiots. That right deserves respect. But not much.
A similar flaw affects libertarian thinking about government-mandated redistribution. Extreme libertarians believe this is immoral or even unconstitutional, and even more moderate libertarians disapprove of government social welfare programs as an infringement on the freedom of taxpayers. But freedom is only one of the two core values our nation was built on. The other is equality. Defining equality, libertarians tend to take a narrow view, believing that it means only political equality with no financial aspects. Defining freedom, by contrast, they take a broad view, and see a violation in every nickel a citizen must spend.
Libertarians ask: By what justification does the government concern itself with inequality -- financial or otherwise -- in the first place? They are nearly alone in asking this question. Even conservatives claim a great concern for equality of opportunity, while opposing opportunity of result. And the reasons seem obvious: some degree of material equality as a necessary basis for political equality; the huge role of luck in getting each of us to our relative stations in life; etc.
But nothing like this is obvious to libertarians. They force us to think it all through from scratch. Good for them.
Posts: 16 | Location: Northern IL | Registered: 13 June 2006
Reagan's rhetoric on government was libertarian, but his policies were liberal. Increased spending, both warfare and welfare, increased regulation, pro-nanny state (War on Drugs and upping the drinking age), and protectionist.
Posts: 66 | Location: New Jersey | Registered: 31 August 2007
Individuals are legally responsible for their views. Messages or parts of messages may be quoted or read on the radio, or reprinted in Thom's books and other materials.
Discussion Community 
