Many desperate citizens have this round of corporate Presidential selectioning, taken to supporting Ron Paul and his Libertarian backed campaign in hopes of finding some avenue forward to changing the sorry state of current US politics. We think that a very mistaken idea, as Ron Paul in no way seems to be even slightly anti-Pentagon militarism, let alone an advocate for decent domestic policy changes. In fact, his domestic policy positions are truly horrifying, and advocate for doing away with public schools and social security and not the Police State, the prison camps, and excessive US BIG government military presence seen across the globe.
The following is some of what Ron Paul has himself posted on his own web site and it should give people hoping to change America for the better some very real reason to pause and think a wee bit more, before they find themselves rushing in madly with support for this Texas based Right Winger. Unfortunately, like the crazy drive to support Barack Obama 4 years ago, many lost American souls just seem simply to want to self delude themselves as much as they possibly can, while trying to find some politician saint or other to worship. Dead end city though! Ron Paul would be a total disaster for the US if he were to get selected. Please stop and think some, before you cast your vote for this guy!
From ronpaul.con
—Ronald Reagan: “Ron Paul is one of the outstanding leaders fighting for a stronger national defense. As a former Air Force officer, he knows well the needs of our armed forces, and he always puts them first. We need to keep him fighting for our country.”—
Pardon? Why would any real advocate of change away from the current American government’s war mongering be putting up an endorsement by now deceased, ex US President war monger Ronnie Raygun on his own website? Doesn’t that seem strange if you think this guy as being something of an anti US government war making guy? Let’s read still more from Ron Paul’s own web site…
—Ron Paul is a proud Air Force veteran. He served as a flight surgeon in the U.S. Air Force from 1963 to 1965 and then in the U.S. Air National Guard from 1965 to 1968. During his military service Ron Paul spent time on the ground in Iran, Pakistan, South Korea, Turkey, Ethiopia and other countries. Ron Paul is very popular with the military. He receives more donations from active duty military personnel than all other Republican candidates combined.—
Well whoopee, Ron! Sounds like there is one big government program you are certainly behind, and that is the Pentagon’s. Did you enjoy your personal part in the US military occupations’ of other peoples countries? Seems as if you did… Ron Paul definitely wants us all to know that he is not against all that big government military funding that has helped drown us all in debt. Take note then.
Those who want yet some more thoughts about why Ron Paul might be quite a bit more a danger than any grand political inspiration, should read the excellent commentary published in this weekend edition of CounterPunch by Andrew Levine titled A Snare and a Delusion- Ron Paul’s Anti-Imperialism Levine correctly points out that the long term menace ahead even more than 76 year old Ron Paul himself, is his even nuttier son, Rand Paul, and the even nuttier US Libertarian Movement itself, pushing their Ayn Rand theology non stop on us as they try to convert whatever gullible nativist wanderer tehy can find. No thanks though.
Personally, I’d sooner convert to becoming a Mormon Christian any day long before I would go out and push and traffic in that obnoxious, self serving Libertarian ideology of the supposed virtue of promoting more world capitalism, while all the while also celebrating the personal selfishness of the US superrich,which is what American Libertarianism really does close to heart. No thanks, Ron. I don’t buy what you are trying to push off on us. You are not antiwar or much anti US militarism at all.. anyway. Nor would you ever help move us away from the destructive selfishness of American corporate driven society.
Don’t see any reason why anybody should be a hollerin’ for Ron this campaign, or at any time. Sure it’s a ‘protest’ against mainstream politicians, but sure as Hell it is really not.
Sounds like a lot of opinion to me friend. If you’d rather have Obama in for another three years I hope you’re comfortable with NDAA, SOPA, and PIPA settling in. Oh and I guess your solid with more wars too? Your right Ron Paul does intend to cut a lot of domestic benefits–and that will hurt me as well but I wont be dead, and neither will you. Those kids overseas, ya know like in Afghanistan in Libya, and Oman, yeah well they’ll actually be dead. My benefits or their lives? I know my priorites, do you Logan? If anyone is Ayn Rand-esque it you.
Sorry to see you totally drinking in the Libertarian propaganda, James, without seemingly a thought about it in your head. What in the world makes you think that a President Ron would actually retreat those US troops from out of those foreign countries? HIS campaign ‘word’ that he would really do so.. ha ha ha ha???
Do you, just like a child, actually believe all those fairy tale promises made by Ron Paul about him only believing in ‘self defense’ for US capitalist Empire (which he is totally behind btw), and not supporting any offensive aggressions by these Pentagon fed businessmen he supports keeping in place forever? I don’t, and think it absolutely foolish for you and others to be so gullible as to believe that Ron is simply going to make play like the 21st century American Empire will become under him like early 19 century fortress Japan was.
Ron Paul is a guy who believes whole heartedly in American fire power and is more than willing to use it full blast to promote American business, but you just ignore all the warning signs about that I listed out for you??? And that is rather sad how you are willing to totally ignore what Ron Paul himself is telling you about himself, same as those Barack Obamanoid followers have done so about their fearless misleader in the DP.
Personally I see a Prsident Ron Paul as being somebody who would put us in imminent risk of being at war with countries like China and Russia, as well as all others. Ron Paul DOES believe in using America’s big stick and you thinking that he does not is just rather dumb dumb dumb. As an Ayn Rand ‘free market’ idoleogue, I believe that he would actually MORE endanger the whole world, not save it from the use of US military might.
Get a clue – and read more than the bumper stickers.
Ron believes in commerce with all nations and alliance with none.
He is a strict constitutionalist – which is why he scares socialist progressives into writing as you have.
He would cut the DoD greatly, because we’d have no need for projecting force into other nations. He’s said he would leave Afghanistan immediately.
If you want the American dream of our founding fathers, he’s your man.
But with that dream comes the responsibility to work for a living and contribute to society – no more handouts. No more Big Government telling you what to eat and how to educate your children. Not really your cup of tea, huh?
Your and Ron Paul’s precious ‘free enterprise’ system can’t provide enough employment for people, can it Publius? That’s because the super rich need to constantly keep an army of people unemployed, so that they can drive their cost of labor down and make yet more profits off the work of the people who actually do the hard work… the poorly paid hourly workers for the most part.
Don’t you Right Wing Libertarians ever get tired of your own smug stupidity, where you constantly berate other people for supposedly being less capable than your own arrogant and ignorant lot? No, I guess not.
Listen Logan, you cant’t refute my claims but simply stating a negative rhetorical question. The man has a record of integrity, and he’s a genuine human being. If you disagree with his feelings on the free market then you are surely warranted that position (as there is much literature on both sides of the equation). We could argue all day on that point so I will let it be. But if you make these claims that the Dr.Paul would further the military industrial complex, then you are calling him a liar. If you see that as true, then what about his voting consistency? Are you saying he will have changed his life long commitment to incorruptibility now?Everything he has ever said concerning foreign policy is non-interventionist–taking a note from Switzerland. Being politically left, you may hate my economic view (again your right) but get the priorities straight. Do you want your larger more socialist state now? Or would you like there to be less international war and loss of human life? If your comfort means more than thousands more violent deaths, then sir vote everywhere but on Paul’s shoulders. Ayn Rand
Oh and Logan, do you really think that a GOP candidate brave enough to denouce our foreign policy–is less honest than President Obama (who kow-towed to the Republicans in office) ?
James, you believe that Ron Paul will end war, well for someone who is a strong supporter of Ayn Rand who believes being selfish is a virtue and believes that people who are poor should disappear; exactly what are you basing your opinions on? If you believe that Ron Paul will not attack foreign nations you are mistaken as Ron Paul has been enthusiastically in the military, gets heavy support from active duty troops, and said by him is a supporter of the military. Also since Ron Paul doesn’t like regulations are you at all worried that nature will be destroyed as corporations will be able to mine and cut down trees with no government regulations in place? Are you willing to ignore the fact that Ron Paul is a strong fan, too, of racist and ultra US nationalist Ayn Rand?
‘(Tony), you make these claims that the Dr.Paul would further the military industrial complex, then you are calling him a liar.’… states James, The Libertarian.
No, I am not calling him a liar much at all here, James. He rather plainly states what he is really for if you just read and consider ALL his political program in its entirety. Did you?
So I went back to his website ronpaul.con a third time to just check EXACTLY what your horse in the presidential horse race has to say about Pentagon military spending, James. And you know what I found? I found that not once does he really call for cutting out all this war spending by ‘big government’! Not once!
I do see that Ron Paul says that he will trim the ‘waste’ out of war spending and make war spending in the US ‘more efficient’ than it is. Too much corruption from government contracts to his liking…. But so what? He wants that big military and wants to to run good and menacing to those he sees as enemies, to whom he would show no mercy to at all.
Perhaps that bull in how he talks out of both sides of his mouth at one and the same time is what makes you see Ron Paul as supposedly being antiwar, James? But I think that is more wishful thinking on your part than what Ron Paul is actually saying here. He’s for militarism but not. He’s for it, James. He’s a military man that wants that military in place,and I see nothing he has said or wrote to make me somehow think otherwise.
No need to call him a liar now. He makes very damn well clear that he is an American nationalist above all, and that he will stomp all over any and everybody that he sees as dangers to US business supremacy. Is that not clear to you? It certainly is to me, and I base it on my readings of Ron Paul himself, and that of his Ayn Rand founding muther-lode heroine.
You simply want to ignore the ideological foundations of Ron Paul’s politics and grab only what you think you like out of the guy? In that, you show yourself quite like all the Obama groupies of 2008-2009. Sad. I thought that you were a much more mature and wise man than that, James. Maybe I had you pegged all wrong now…?
Ron Paul’s Libertarianism potentially is even more dangerous than the hypocritical and lying corporate Democrats. There is a certain pragmatism in the Dems (and yes even in the Repubs, too) that is all but totally lost in the nut job ideologians of the Libertarian fringe Right extreme. You just don’t see that though, because you have willfully closed your own eyes off the data not to your liking about these crazy folk. Ron is all against big government when it goes to working for the poor folk of our society. But when it goes to keep military and cops well fed, then somehow he definitely has a change of heart. Get real about the guy, James! He thinks that people like yourself are miserable bums and doubt that not at all. He loves cops and soldiers though… Got it?
When Ron Paul says that he is ‘for a strong defense’, he is really saying that he is for a huge military like we have now. He is not for reducing it down, since that would not be ‘for a strong defense’. He wants those US nuclear weapons all over threatening the rest of the world, and I think you know that deep down, don’t you, James?
Absolutely agree that Paul is No Pal to liberty and justice for all.
What info. have any of you folks on Rocky Anderson? Think it is absolutely vital for us to study facts (i.e. have they walked the walk and not merely talked the talk) re. any candidate for whom we cast a Death by Diebold vote (who the hell knows if that vote will be counted and/or counted honestly?). Voting is now a not at all funny joke, but try we must. We who so crave real McCoy CHANGE (vs. just more MSD – manipulation, spin, distraction) have to get lots of courage and determination, and fight Wisconsin style to do all it takes to…
UNDO THE COUP!
First of all, thank you Logan for responding in a civil matter (it seems too often that other contributors resort to throat-tearing). But yes I am aware that Ron Paul wants a strong military at home. I want that, sir. Very much so–our world is one of people who act in their rational self interest.
And yes, I am aware that Ron Paul is also a reader of Ayn Rand in so much as libertarian economic principle extends. As much as you might find this odious, I cannot find fault in this. American business primacy is not a bad thing at all–hegemonic theory would suggest that one dominant power (i.e. the hegemon) is much better than a multi polar political balance. Yes, of course this relies on the fact that the US as a hegemon would be benign. Now as we know this is far-fetched (being a benign state and all) but it is surely more possible in a economically competitive state that is non-interventionist.
Logan, again I thank you for the civility, but I’m going to respectfully ask for the data that you drew your claims from. As for Safiyaah, I’d like you also to provide for me the evidence that Ron Paul wants the “poor to go away”. That sounds like a blatant simplification and a gross misunderstanding of policy. But, should you have the evidence for such a claim–I’d be glad to consider it.
Dr. Paul voted against both Wars my friends, the virtual entirety of the Democrats didn’t even do that in the beginning. Non-interventionism and a warming stance with Iran sounds good me sir’s and ladies. A standing army at home that is powerful–is certainly one I comfortable with. I distrust the government sure but the regular military men on base have my trust. Obama is pro-intervention and you know to high hell that the Newt and Romney are too.
Also–nobody addressed my question. Is anyone going to suggest a candidate more likely not to intervene than him with the military?
Rocky Anderson for just one example of a candidate, James. Actually I did already answer this question of yours earlier when I said basically that I think that an Ayn Randite like Ron Paul would be even more dangerous for the world if he were to become president than even if the Republicrats continue to hold onto the Presidential office. Ron Paul would be as big a menace as having Sarah Palin in there or a guy like Newt. Possibly even worse. He’d blow the whole world apart to stay true to his ideology, I believe.
I might add also that your own view that American business supremacy over the entire world is somehow a good thing is a completely ass backwards reactionary Point of view imho. You share that reactionary view point, too, with Ron Paul. PLUS, I don’t want a large standing army anywhere, ‘home’ or anywhere elsewhere. The People have to pay for that and why should they? We actually need to help disarm the world, not be the biggest thug in it, James. You don’t seem to get that though…