Ron Paul

[unreadphilosophy]

For some time now, I have been a member of the Ron Paul R3VOLUTION. I first became familiar with Dr. Paul during the middle to late part of the 2008 election. At first, I thought Ron Paul was just another run-of-the-mill Republican. I thought he was just going to be another right wing preaching war, torture, and more war. Still, I decided to go on Youtube, and watch one of his video's. Needless to say that when I started watching the video, I was floored! I could not believe what I was listening to. Here was a man did not speak of wars, torture, taxes, or more bureaucracy. This was a man that spoke of non-intervention, constitutional freedoms, sound money, and limited government. The video, which only lasted for about five-seven minutes, had me in a complete trance. I would like to say that before I watched the video, I was a liberal democrat. When the video was over, I had become a libertarian. Not only was Ron Paul was the man that I HAD to support, I knew he was the man America NEEDED to support.

So, you may be wondering why I decided to support Dr. Paul, and why I continue to support him to this day. Well, the answer to that is simple: I am sick and tired of the government violating, and destroying the constitution. A few months ago, I read Ron Paul's Revolution book, and I was both shocked and disgusted at what I had read. I knew the government has violated the constitution, but never did I think it was as bad as what I had read. Let me give you a few example:

-The constitution only allows one tax: the income. All these other taxes are nonense, and are stripping the American tax payer of their hard-earned money. Taxes do nothing but give the government more control over your life, and your money. Plus, I've done research, and to both mine, and your surprise as well, we've outdone the government in terms of donations to the groups that the government takes our money from.

-The constitution does not give our government the right to go international, and fight wars with other countries. The constitution gives our government the right to rasie a military, but for DOMESTIC purposes only. Going halfway around the world to destory lives, and take our money for an international war is not domestic. Therefore, it is unconstitutional. In fact, the only war that was eer constitutional was the Revolutionary War.

-The constution does not give our government the right to spy on us. If you remember, Bush destroyed our privacy by using the Patriot Act, and illegally spied on our phone calls, and our e-mails.

-The constitution does not allow for the creation, nor the foundation of a Federal Reserve. First off, the Reserve isn't even Federal (it's privately owned), it's not even a Rserve (it prnts money out of thin air, which makes it vunerable to inflation and deflation), and it's neve been audited. The founding fathers knew what would happen if a reserve were ever created. Jefferson stated that if America allowed a Federal Reserve to come into existence, it would be throwing itself to an organization that would be able to create inflation and deflation whenever it wanted. Plus, the constitution doesn't even allow for the creation of a reserve note. The constitution clearly states that gold and silver would be the only items used for legal tender.

There are many other things, but if I stated everything, I'm afraid we would be here all night.

I know that not everyone connects with Dr. Paul, but I believe he states something everyone can connect too.

If you've ever listened to Dr. Paul, or if you support him, what do you think of him?

I hope that Dr. Paul's message of liberty spreads to each and everyone of you.

Remember, as the great V from V for Vendetta said, "people should not fear their governments, government should fear their people."

The Revolution continues.

 

[varioustbags]

I'm Australian so American 'politics' is something I enjoy for the drama (first the absolute hilarity and then the jaw dropping fear of its policies), but I became aware of Ron Paul about a year before the election and My reaction was similar to your own. Here is a man with conviction and views that make sense. Now I don't know if ALL of his ideas a gems, some probably arn't but he bases them in that little pearl rarely used in American politics called "by the people, FOR the people". I disagree on some points with him but he actually has ideas and they are LOGICAL and his purpose is the benefit of the population!!!! its unbelievable. I sincerely believe that he may be the door to a less corrupt political system (so i have extremely high hopes).

Furthermore, to me it seems that there is a requirement in America for a third political party. Ofcourse there as been a lot of talk about a GOP split. i hope so because the republican party needs to rid itself of the evangelicals. They need to create a party for all the abortion, gay, Iraq, stem cell people who don't seem to be too worried about any other real issues. This will allow a new party that has the chance to win an election and more importantly create a situation in america where no one party can control the world as bi-partisanship and working together across lines will be necessary as it would be very rare for a party to hold over 50%.

Having said all this. Ron Paul is the MAN to lead a new party of secularism and allow some discussion and THINKING back into the right side of politics. IF he doesnt want to, you can still create a centrist party and go for the god of all political figures and appoint Bernie Sanders head of a new party. That man is a legend. :yes:

 

[Jackytar]

Libertarian philosophy makes sense to me as well, and on any given political issue it is my default starting point. I shy away from the extremes, though, and libertarians have their extreme wing like the others. I guess I'm a moderate libertarian.

As for Ron Paul, he is a very likable guy but he was not an effective communicator during the election. If you were not already well versed in libertarian philosophy he made no sense during the debates. He probably would have been an ineffective president for the same reason. It's not enough to have the right ideas. You have to be able to bring others along with you, especially if your ideas deviate sharply from the norm. Still, it was refreshing to see him in the mix and gaining some traction. I would like to see the libertarian party grow in numbers and relevance and hope they field some good candidates in the future. And it's time they abandon the GOP.

Cato.org and reason.com have some good libertarian reading.

Jackytar

 

[Zephyr]

American Libertarianism is ironically one of the largest enemies to liberty here, by trying to simply replace the government hierarchy with a privatized one and pretend everything is alright.

 

[J Bryson]

I'm amazed that none of his supporters here have responded to the allegations of racism.

 

[Nepenthe]

Free market evangelism is ludicrous, and Ron Paul was a joke. From his insistence that enforcing property rights (or property ownership as the solution to the world's problems) rather than regulation would help solve environmental problems, his tax (or anti-tax) fetish, and on and on. Then there's his far right stance on immigration and abortion:
"I could get paid for killing a fetus one second before birth, but I could get arrested for killing it one second later.”

Yep J Bryson, Paul couldn't shake those newsletters from the early 90s. They were full of racist vitriol, homophobia, anti-semitism, mockery of AIDS victims, and petty criticism of MLK. Even if he didn't personally write them, they all were published under his name and his ignorant "I don't know who wrote them" defense was ludicrous. His record on state/church separation issues were emphatically right-wing as well.

Paul opposed hate crime legislation, as well as same-sex adoptions, and federal stem cell funded research (a typical stance of libertarians who oppose federal funding despite the massive successes particularly in the medical sciences).

Free markets must be regulated or they will inevitably devolve into monopolies. Capitalism consolidates money and power to a small minority; it is the enemy of collectivism and even democracy. Ron Paul and libertarianism is a joke.

 

[YmirGF]

Ron Paul and libertarianism is a joke.

I agree. Both libertarians and specifically those in the Ron Paul camp strike me as be fairly naive in more areas than just politics.

 

[Jackytar]

...it is the enemy of collectivism and even democracy.

There is nothing in libertarian thought against forming a collective. In fact, it is one of the core principles. As long as they are entered into freely. Why do I get the impression that's not what you have in mind? Tyranny of the majority, anybody?

Jackytar

 

[syoonsh]

Who ever becomes president in US, their foreign policy will never be change.

 

[Zephyr]

Who ever becomes president in US, their foreign policy will never be change.

I dunno dude, Ron Paul is pretty terrible...


What I'm saying is that he'd be the same but with PMCs instead of the Army.

 

[Rise Above]

Free markets must be regulated or they will inevitably devolve into monopolies. Capitalism consolidates money and power to a small minority; it is the enemy of collectivism and even democracy. Ron Paul and libertarianism is a joke.

Absolutely. If you want a glimpse of the road unbridled, Misean capitalism leads a country down, you need not look past Somalia.

"Let's, in this country, let's put aside the mass inequalities, let's put aside the tens of millions of people who struggle from hand to mouth, let's put aside the many who live without real economic security (which might include many of us), let's put aside the desperate ones at the very bottom, let's even put aside the middle class people who are getting ripped off left and right with their taxes and overwork and loss of benefits and the like, let's put aside the impoverishment of the public sector and the destruction of a livable environment - let's accept the idea that we live in great material abundance, which, in fact, compared to much of the world, we do. Many in this country do live well, but it wasn't capitalism that gave us this standard of living - it was the democratic struggle against capitalism. They didn't give us all these things. I mean, why don't we Americans work for fifteen cents an hour, as they do in Haiti and Indonesia? Is it because we're just so much more self-respecting? Is that it? No, it's because the democratic class struggle has advanced to a more favourable level, and that's happened only in the last few generations. In 1900, America was a third-world country - half a century before the term was invented. We were a third-world nation; child labour was widespread; poverty was widespread; fourteen-hour work days; ten year-olds working in factories for fourteen hours, seven days a week; no social services to speak of, a few church soup kitchens and charities, maybe; no social benefits; typhoid epidemics in our major cities; tuberculosis and other diseases of poverty; no public housing or public health programs; very little public education; no public libraries, really. Advances came not with capitalism. That condition - that's what capitalism gave us. That's what the country was: a pure free market - unregulated, undiluted capitalism in 1900 - but massive margins of profit; huge margins of profit; massive, massive, massive wealth for the Mellons and the Morgans and the Huntingtons and the Hartfords and the Rockefellers and the Carnegies and the Vanderbilts - more money than they knew what to do with, and you know what they wanted after they got that money? They wanted more, and they wanted more, and they would destroy whole communities to get more and more and more. Wealth, my friends, wealth is the most damaging and the most dangerous addiction that this society faces. It was the people, it was the American people, it was the working people in this country who fought and fought for the eight-hour day, who fought for public education, who fought for public health services, it was the people who fought for decent housing and a decent standard of living, who fought for a minimum wage, who fought against discrimination. Name one great leader, name one great political leader, name one great intellectual who fought and did those things. No, those people, they jumped on the bandwagon after the people fought, and it was the plutocrats, it was the capitalists, it was the economic royalists who fought against every one of those things, they fought against giving you a decent wage - they're still fighting against that, they're still fighting for wage cuts, they fought against social security, they fought against occupational safety - they're still fighting against it. They fought against environmental protections - they still are fighting against it and undermining it in every way they can because they're afraid they're going to lose out on a dollar - because every dollar they've gotta give to you, every dollar they've gotta spend on stupid things like public safety and wages and occupational safety and consumer product safety - every dollar wasted on stupid things like that, which the free market would take care of, every dollar spent on that is one less dollar for their insatiable greed. So don't credit the capitalists with giving you whatever modicum of prosperity you have - we got it despite it, we tore it out of their teeth and out of their greedy claws, and we've still got to hold onto it and they're trying to get it back from us."
- Michael Parenti

 

[Jackytar]

I'm not sure what you guys are railing against, but it ain't Libertarianism.

Jackytar

 

[Zephyr]

I'm not sure what you guys are railing against, but it ain't Libertarianism.

Jackytar

We're talking unfettered capitalism, which Libertarians seem to be a bit too keen on.

 

[Jackytar]

We're talking unfettered capitalism, which Libertarians seem to be a bit too keen on.

We're talking about unfettered capitalism? Really? You mean the kind where piracy and kidnapping laws are an impediment to legitimate economic activities? Where greedy industrial tyrants enslave and impoverish child workers, rape the environment, and squash competition? The xenophobic, homophobic, gun-loving, immoral, malevolent, money grubbing, foaming-at-the mouth madman brand of unfettered capitalism? Sure, I guess that's a reasonable characterization. Makes sense to me. That's why I'm a Libertarian! Bring it on!

Jackytar

 

[Zephyr]

We're talking about unfettered capitalism? Really? You mean the kind where piracy and kidnapping laws are an impediment to legitimate economic activities? Where greedy industrial tyrants enslave and impoverish child workers, rape the environment, and squash competition? The xenophobic, homophobic, gun-loving, immoral, malevolent, money grubbing, foaming-at-the mouth madman brand of unfettered capitalism? Sure, I guess that's a reasonable characterization. Makes sense to me. That's why I'm a Libertarian! Bring it on!

Jackytar

Actually, that kind of does bring to mind a few anarcho-capitalists I've met...

 

[Rise Above]

I'm not sure what you guys are railing against, but it ain't Libertarianism.

We're railing against the libertarianism/minarchism/anarcho-capitalism espoused by Austrian authors such as Ludwig Von Mises, Friedrich Hayek and Murray Rothbard - all of whom Ron Paul admittedly admires and the works of whom he admittedly bases his political philosophy around. We most certainly are railing against libertarianism.

 

[Jackytar]

We're railing against the libertarianism/minarchism/anarcho-capitalism espoused by Austrian authors such as Ludwig Von Mises, Friedrich Hayek and Murray Rothbard - all of whom Ron Paul admittedly admires and the works of whom he admittedly bases his political philosophy around. We most certainly are railing against libertarianism.

Jeez, you're good. I have portraits of those guys in my south wing library.

Jackytar

 

[Jackytar]

For those not familiar...

Mises, Hayek, and Rothbard are not all Mr Burns type characters from The Simpsons. They had the audacity to assert that there exists spontaneous order in free markets that no governing body can improve on and that it is a conceit of the annoited to believe otherwise. They are in the company of H. L. Mencken, Wilhelm Roepke, Robert Heilbroner, Henry Hazlitt, Ayn Rand, Milton Freidman, Robert Nozick, Emanuel Kant, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, John Locke, Adam Smith, David Hume, and on and on... all of whom would implicitly agree with the following statement:

Herbert Spencer's law of equal freedom:
"Every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the freedom of any other man" (Herbert Spencer stated that this would naturally extend to women as well, a notably progressive position for a man of his time.)

David Boaz paraphases this:
Individuals have the right to do whatever they want to, so long as they respect the equal rights of others. The role of government is to protect individual rights from foreign aggessors and from neighbors who murder, rape, rob, assault or defraud us. And if government seeks to do more than that, it will itself be depriving us of our rights and liberties.

This, of course, is the "hard-core" libertarian position. Most libertarians, to include David Boaz and myself, do not self-identify with the extreme position and allow for other government roles such as certain public works on the local level. But for them, and for myself, individual freedom, individual responsibility and free markets is a guiding principle. And like Ron Paul I admit it.

Here's a good light hearted introduction to free market economics: I, Pencil by Leonard E Read.

Jackytar

 

[yossarian22]

Erm, the constitution allows for plenty of other taxes besides the income. I thought most of the hardline libertarians felt that the income tax wasn't constitution, but then I dont really pay them much attention.

Ron Paul wants to pin the USD to a commodity (like gold), so it really doesn't matter what his other positions are (they are almost as retarded).

Moving beyond the libertarian party, the general tenets of libertarianism are pretty much retarded and run contrary to historic examples. The late 19th century isn't remembered for how well workers had it. Besides that, free market capitalism is ultimately self defeating and makes the assumption that people will rationally act in their own self interest over the long term, which is obviously wrong *cough current recession cough*.

Your two phrases are pretty different given that you slipped in government.
Smith would disagree with flat taxation (and other bits of libertarianis) by the way.

 

[Jackytar]

Ron Paul wants to pin the USD to a commodity (like gold), so it really doesn't matter what his other positions are (they are almost as retarded).

I used to hold a significant amount of cash in USD. I've put it into commodities because hyperinflation has me concerned. If you think the fiat dollar is superior by all means make your case. I have a personal interest in hearing your rationale.

Moving beyond the libertarian party, the general tenets of libertarianism are pretty much retarded and run contrary to historic examples.

You think socialism has historically beat capitalism? Now I'm really interested in hearing your arguments. I think.

The late 19th century isn't remembered for how well workers had it.

And how is this a verdict on Libertarian ideals, exactly?

Besides that, free market capitalism is ultimately self defeating and makes the assumption that people will rationally act in their own self interest over the long term, which is obviously wrong *cough current recession cough*.

Good point, bad example. Failure is necessary for capitalism to work. A better example would be the self-directed retirement plans. Or the Libertarian model for health care (HSAs). They both rely on the assumption that individuals act in their own long term self-interest. Under this model, people will suffer as a result of poor planning or bad luck (sometimes referred to as social Darwinism). The Libertarian response is that those more fortunate will be charitable on a case by case basis and that private services and voluntary collectives will emerge to assist those who need help planning. And there will be *much more* wealth to go around. I guess it all comes down to whether you believe in the inherent goodness and intelligence of self interested individuals endowed with liberty and the ability of the free market to allocate resources and create wealth. I do, but the criticism is legit. Social Darwinism is real and the pressure will always be to form a collective of the whole with mandatory participation to counteract it. The problem is, this also works only in theory. As an observer of economics I'm sure you are aware that by far the biggest economic threat facing the US is the looming fiscal gap built into socialized medicine (Medicare) and socialized retirement (Social Security). The government (we, collectively) screwed this up royally. Why? Politicians and business interests acting in their own self interest. Each successive administration simply kicked the can down the road rather than give *us* the bad news and risk being voted out of office - by us. And businesses love laws that favor their interests. Why wouldn't they? Rule by elites may have served us better. You prepared to risk that? I'm on the tail end of the baby boom. By the time I need those services they won't be there for me. Or, if we move to fix it now, they will be drastically reduced - below the level of my FORCED contributions. If you are a young person living in the US you should be concerned about this. Start saving now. Spend less than you earn - always - and take care of your health.

Your two phrases are pretty different given that you slipped in government.
Smith would disagree with flat taxation (and other bits of libertarianis) by the way.

Okay, I guess I need to say it. Libertarians are not anarchists. Personal liberties and property rights need to be protected, to include protection from those who would defraud us or destroy the environment. Anarcho-capitalism is the extreme fringe of this philosophy, where security, even national security, is provided by private forces. If you want to debate the merits of anarcho-capitalism, go find some anarcho-capitalists to rail against. I'm not calling you guys communists.

I will also point out that at any given time in history under any form of government money and power has accumulated into the hands of the few. It is, by all appearances, the natural order of things. If you see a fix that takes away power and property from the individual you are on the wrong side of history.

Jackytar