Ron Paul has been getting a lot of attention lately in his presidential run. Even lefties who ought to know better think he might be some kind of straight-talking anti-war populist with real ideas for change.
Nonsense. He’s a sharply right-wing libertarian who, like most libertarians, is deeply tortured by the thought that someone, somewhere might gain benefit from his tax dollars. He hates taxes and also suffers from the hard right-wing delusion that abolishing the Federal Reserve will, with a wave of the pixie dust wand, make everything wonderful again.
He opposes regional agreements the US might a signatory to. This is not because GATT, for example, is noxious and exploitative but because it, gasp, allows other countries to have a say in what America does. In other words, he believes in American Exceptionalism and is also isolationist, a pretzel of logic that only those on the fringe right try to negotiate.
As for immigration, he wants to send all undocumented workers back home, stop birthplace citizenship, eliminate hospital care for the undocumented – but somehow neglects to mention enforcing the law against employers who hire them. That the US economy would be in a shambles if all of Them were sent home does not occur to him, but then reality seldom dents the skulls of ideologues.
His stand on the war is conspicuous by saying absolutely nothing about what should be done in Iraq. Not one word.
He wants to remove Roe vs. Wade. “I am also the prime sponsor of HR 300, which would negate the effect of Roe v Wade by removing the ability of federal courts to interfere with state legislation to protect life.”
He’s also heavily allied with and supported by neo-confederate forces, is rabidly anti-gay, and has a 100% rating from the Christian Coalition.
Don’t be fooled by the low-key approach, he’s further to the right than either Bush or Cheney.
Well…
Paul does want to leave Iraq. As quickly as possible. He started speaking out against the planned war in Iraq in 1998. He’s also been speaking out against going to war with Iran for years.
Yeah, he hates taxes. Who doesn’t? In most all ways including charity, an individual spends his money more wisely than someone else spends his money for him.
Yeah he’s against NATO, NAFTA and such things, and I can’t say I agree with him here. But he’s staunchly in favor of free trade (not managed trade, such as NAFTA, see Joseph Stiglitz’s book on how many trade deals and the IMF harm developing countries) and diplomacy.
He doesn’t want to ship illegals back home. He wants to remove their incentives for coming here illegally (birthright citizenship, etc), but realizes that would take a while. In the mean time, we need to secure our borders to slow the influx of illegals (and help national security).
I don’t really see how he is anti-gay. He’s stated he wants to get rid of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and doesn’t believe in giving any “group” different treatment than another. Yes, he absolutely hates the idea of the federal government dictating what marriage is to the states. But he hates the idea of any illegal, unconstitutional legislation, and the 10th amendment clearly leaves marriage as a state issue.
And so the same goes for abortion and Roe v. Wade. I’m pro-choice, but damn, you have to admit Roe v. Wade was a horrible legal decision. If I were a constitutionalist I’d be against it too.
He dislikes the Fed for very real reasons, like the recent housing bubble and the Great Depression (yes, Bernanke finally admitted the Fed caused it, oops). Its certainly not the cause of all ills, but one cannot deny one of the largest contributors to unpopular wars throughout history is a government’s ability to print or debase its currency. It allows the government to spend money on things no taxpayer would stand for if his taxes were increased. And the result, is inflation…
You sir are a liar and a coward. The fact that you have the phrase ‘anti-war’ at the top of this pissant blog is an affront to everyone truly working for peace. You’ve mischaracterized Congressman Paul on every issue with zero substantiation of your blatantly false claims.
Please leave this country, you’re holding the rest of us back.
You’re pretty far off base. This isn’t about right ad left – it’s about right and wrong. What our government is doing is wrong, and Paul is the only man who will even try to set things right again. Everybody else is just another politician with their eyes on the prize.
Ron Paul is a Constitutionalist. He thinks that the federal government should not be in charge of anything except what the constitution says it is in charge of. He thinks that the States should be in charge of tax funded programs. I happen to agree, because I think that small governments function much more efficiently than big governments. He hates income taxes, but it’s not because he thinks that people don’t deserve help. He actually knows that our income taxes aren’t being used for that purpose at all, but that topic is far too complicated to explain in this format.
He is not an isolationist. He is a non-interventionist. He believes that out military should be used to denfend our borders and only our borders. He does not think that we should be bringing democracy to people with guns.
Personally, I do not want the US to answer to outside organizations either. It just opens the door for Chinese troops to march on our soil the first time a future President kicks the UN inspectors out of America.
He certainly does not believe in “American Exceptional-ism” with the exception that we should lead by example, not by force. Right now, he thinks that we are not setting a very good example.
You’re really naive if you think that you have a better grasp of economics than he does. He cannot end birthright citizenship, because the President cannot amend the Constitution. He might support the concept, but he cannot do it.
You’re also not paying much attention at all if you think he has not said what he would do with Iraq. He has stated he would bring them home immediately. The Iraqis need to run Iraq. Not admitting that is what has us in the quagmire to begin with. Obama wants 100,000 troops there. Hillary envisions us there for “at least” ten years. Ron Paul would bring troops home from all over the world, not just Iraq. That’s a much better plan than marching around the globe, spreading democracy with guns, everywhere we need puppet governments.
Anti gay? He is the only candidate that has said he will toss out “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” and let soldiers be judged solely on their merits as soldiers.
He can’t remove RvW – that’s the Supreme Court’s job. He does believe that the Constitution does not guarantee women the right to an abortion, and therefore abortion should be decided by the individual states. I think he’s right, but I’d rather see an Amendment to support the right to choose. That way we could all finally quit wondering when it was going to disappear.
Ron Paul is running on a platform that would strip the Executive Branch of all the powers it has grabbed, including signing statements and executive orders. If your candidate isn’t talking about giving power back to the Congress and the Court, where it is supposed to be, then you should ask yourself why that might be.
Pick a topic. Any topic. Go see what Paul wrote about it 10, 20 years ago. You’ll see that he was dead on with his predictions about where we were headed. The government spying on it’s own people? Cameras on every corner? Carrting our papers, in the form of “The Real ID?”
That’s not the country I want to leave to my children.
Laf – what do you want? Do you want a real anti-war candidate? Or do you want someone with a “plan” for “Iraq” (you can sub whatever country in there you want, Iran for example, or Venezuela or China or Cuba)? And what sort of “plan”? Isn’t the only legitimate plan free and open trade?
While you may disagree with his diagnosis, you cannot say that he is not interested in “change” – clearly he is light years away from the politics-as-usual crowd in both parties.
His opposition to managed trade (not free trade) should be something that you “progressives” could get behind, but I think you will end up stuck with the “We’re not taking nukes off the table either” party because you can’t see past your own noses. What’s so progressive about nepotism, anyway? Are you guys closet monarchists, or are you “progressive”?
Y’all need to read his website before assuming you know what his views are.
http://polizeros.com/2007/07/16/ron-paul-on-the-issues/
“[Ron Paul] would strip the Executive Branch of all the powers it has grabbed, including signing statements and executive orders.”
I don’t know anything about the candidate, but I’ve heard promises like that before. They sound great, even to the candidate… until he gets into power, then giving up all that power suddenly doesn’t seem like a good idea. (Often a war is used as an excuse to hang on to or increase all that power.)
It takes an extraordinarily moral man or woman to keep such a promise– a la George Washington or Mahatma Gandhi– and they are few and far between. Is Ron Paul really on that level?
You only give a cursory of shallow glance at his statements on the issues w/o understanding the constitutional underpinnings of his arguements. Ron Paul was against bombing Serbia. Where were you on that issue? I as a liberal vehemently opposed even Clintons murders. I am as left wing as you can get. (think WTO, Seattle). I have done thorough research about Ron Paul after discovering him on antiwar dot com. If you are blinded by party doctrine and cannot see a natural ally against imperialistic slaughter of the innocents than at least be honest and admit that putting democrats in power is more important to you than ending the war. Paul is the only candidate who explicitly says he won’t attack Iran, can you say the same of Hillary or Obama. They have even kept all options on the table. Your hypocrisy would be amusing if WWIII weren’t at stake. Peace.
As a radical organizer friend just said about Ron Paul, “some liberals voted for Hitler because he was socialist on a couple of issues.
From Orcinus
“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.”
Ron Paul’s website says nothing about leaving Iraq or opposing war. However it says lots about denying birthright citizenship, repealing Roe v. Wade, and there’s plenty of documentation out there on his decades-long association with neo-confederate and neo-fascist forces.
His website says nothing about opposing imperialism. Not a word.
More from Orcinus
“With all these extremist beliefs forming the underpinnings of his political agenda, it follows, like night and day, that he’ll be exhorting like-minded extremists to follow. This is why you’ll find, in Paul’s record, a nearly unbroken string of appearances before various far-right groups, from the Gary North wackaloons in the 1980s to various “Patriot” organizations in the 1990s to neo-Confederate and white-supremacist groups like the Council of Conservative Citizens and the League of the South. “
“If Bush has taught us anything, it’s that we need to hold ourselves and our candidates to much higher standards than that.”
But where would we find candidates that we could hold to such a standard? Ain’t none of the current pack qualified.
“Paul is the only candidate who explicitly says he won’t attack Iran, can you say the same of Hillary or Obama.”
I hope there are more choices than those three, because otherwise I’m moving to Myanmar! Much as I hate to vote Republican for President, if Hillary gets the Dem nod, I won’t have much choice.
Well did you hear the Anti-defamation league just published a “salute” to Ron Paul for his lifelong work towards liberty. Would you consider the ADL an extremist group. Maybe they reviewed his background and concluded that he is not so “wackaloon”.
It’s hardly surprising he was saluted by a Zionist organization. Same imperialist aims, and all that.
I notice you haven’t refuted anything I said about him. No doubt because you can’t.
You aren’t much of a troll (nor I suspect have you ever been liberal). But nice try.
Wow Bob!!!
I visit your website often, and it has a lot of very good information, but these reactionary right wing postings and comments in support of Ron Paul reveal that a lot of right wing wacko’s also visit your website as well.
I know someone who is a follower of Ron Paul, and although personally he is a really nice guy, his politics are really screwed-up.
I believe the subliminal indoctrination and socialization process which takes place in a capitalist society and is present within all it’s insitutions, which includes it’s systems of education, as well as the media, etc… creates the fertile ground for such convoluted and contradictory ideologies to take root and flourish…
Professor Doug Dowd has a good analysis of this in his many articles and books, as well as some audio archives
Analysis of capitalism in relation to the present day
http://www.dougdowd.org/2006/class20060509/class20060509.mp3
At The Cliffs Edge
http://www.dougdowd.org/NewFiles/at_the_cliffs_edge/index.htm
Capitalism: The Most Important of the Big Four.
http://www.dougdowd.org/NewFiles/at_the_cliffs_edge/chapter_3.pdf
Doug Dowds website
http://www.dougdowd.org/
Naw, they aren’t regular readers, they just google ‘Ron Paul’ to see what pops up.
During the historic immigrant rights marches last year, Polizeros got hundreds of vile racist comments, but you never saw them because them went to the moderation queue first, where I deleted them.
They’re just trolls.
>I as a liberal vehemently opposed even Clintons murders. I am as left wing as you can get. — joshuabrucel
Judging from your myspace site you’re anything but. So, it appears you’ve been misrepresenting yourself.
All of which is standard procedure for right wing trolls.
There are those who consider themselves left , and sometimes left can mean different things here in the US, than it does in the rest of the world.
Before my own political awakening I thought I was pretty far to the left since I subscribed to magazines like Mother Jones or Utne Reader, The Nation etc. and I had a friend from Sweden who was visiting here at the time and I let her read some of these magazines to see what she thought of them, and she said that she thought that they were pretty conservative.
And I tried to get her to explain what she meant, and she said that what passes here for left in most cases is considered pretty conservative in Sweden. And this may be because real revolutionary socialist and communist views are more common and more widely read about in Sweden than here in the US.
She said that she had read books by various Marxist thinkers in Sweden, France, Geramny, and elsewhere in Europe, and she mentioned their names and of course she thought that I would have jeard of them, since I was a greatly liberated and open minded college student at the time.
But of course I had to tell her I never heard of them, and she was very surprised by that. At the time I had not even read Marx, Engles, Gueverra, and other more commonly known marxists, so it was hard for me to really understand what she meant by calling these so-called left publications very conservative by Swedish standards.
Here in the US even at the University level of education we get very little exposure to real alternative philosophies, and the only time I read any Marx in college was only because we had to critically analyze some of his writings, and not really look at them as a real analysis of capitalism.
There is somewhat of an explanation about why this takes place By Prof. Mel Leiman
Is Marxism Relevant in the 21st Century?
Play Version
http://www.radio4all.net/play.php/playlist-Teaching%20Radical%20Alternatives-Teaching%20Radical%20Alternatives:%20Is%20Marxism%20Relevant%20in%20the%2021st%20Century-.pls?version_id=19735&
Download Version
http://www.radio4all.net/pub/archive2/07.01.07/jg0@nilbs.com/1985-1-20060303-Mel_Leiman__Is_Marx_Relevant_20060224.mp3
More programs by Mel Leiman and Others
http://altbuzz.org/mp3s/
Well any way in the course of those years I began to expand my readings to include Marx, and others, so I could educate myself, and now I cannot really read any of this so-called left leaning literature without seeing through it from a Marxist perspective.
Today I really understand what my friend from Sweden meant when she called this so called left leaning literature pretty conservative.
There are many political ironies in the U.S. First one has to clarify that we are all liberals, at least in comparison with the monarchists who represent the traditional Right in Europe. Against that backdrop, we have conservative liberals and liberal liberals. But there are fewer of both than there used to be. The “Left” in America isn’t all that far left, and the “Right” is often left of Bill Clinton.
I see what passes for conservatism today in the U.S. (i.e. neo-cons) and they look to me just like centrist liberals serving the corporate world. The fundamental conservative values I grew up with are nonexistent– just as I’m sure many Europeans (and even many Americans) look at the American Left and shrug their shoulders.
What it boils down to is, we have two wings of Centrist politics, each claiming to serve either labor or business, but both really serving themselves at a huge, taxpayer-funded buffet. And any candidate that doesn’t fit the mold is edged out by the party faithful.
The true irony is that traditional American conservatives like me and would-be radicals like Bob have much more in common than most people want to admit– and far more in common with each other than with the ruling junta.
“would-be radicals like Bob.” I take umbrage at that, old pal. Nothing would-be about it!
Sure, those on the political edges see the changes first and are often reacting to the same things. But their solutions often tend to be, ah, radically different.
As a hard working entrepreneur at the age of 24 I see the ultimate value in what ron paul has to offer this country.
When it comes to taxes, only the lazy and complacent want the government spending it for them. “taking care of us” as the socialists put it.
-Dan
Nice blog. Keep up the good work.