Interview: Who Is Ron Paul?

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TheRealJuliane said:
I have found that people who use the word “Neocon” are anti-Semites. Many of them are also 9/11 truthers, and a fair percentage, like Ron Paul, believe drugs should be legalized. The Venn diagram for those 3 groups is a heavy overlap.

Let us think rationally about the legalization of drugs.
  1. Supply will increase and price will drop. The effect on demand will largely depend on the price elasticity of drugs, which, because they are addictive, is quite low I would think. In other words, if you need a fix, most people are figuring out some way to get it. Otherwise, they are dead or detoxing in jail. (Exceptions of course for cigarettes, alcohol, and prescription meds)
  2. Would more people “start” using drugs? Let us model a world where an 1/8th of an ounce of California weed costs $30 instead of $60. For the virgin drug user, would a change in price increase their propensity to experiment? I would argue no, as beginning users see their first purchase of drugs as a one time cost, and don’t anticipate getting addicted. Furthermore, most people who use drugs for the first time don’t pay for it, as an already using friend provides it.
  3. Large effect on prison population.
    open.salon.com/blog/stephannie/2010/05/16/how_many_people_are_incarcerated_for_drug_related_offenses
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TheRealJuliane said:
I have found that people who use the word “Neocon” are anti-Semites. Many of them are also 9/11 truthers, and a fair percentage, like Ron Paul, believe drugs should be legalized. The Venn diagram for those 3 groups is a heavy overlap.

p.s. Ron Paul is a Libertarian and has made pro-choice statements in the past. I have just now begun to hear that he is anti-abortion but this goes against the Libertarian platform of “just leave me alone and I will leave you alone.” I realize he is a doctor but so are abortionists, the head of PP here is an OB-GYN.
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  1. Yes some who use neocon are anti semites. Certainly not all. I’ll call out a neocon when I see one. My best friend and political confidante and hardcore Catholic is the ultimate example of a neocon. He isn’t Jewish by any means and I still don’t hesititate to refer to him as a neocon if it meets the context of the conversation, just as I wouldn’t hesitate to call a Jew or a Protestant a neocon if they embraced the label.
  2. You’ve setup a strawman with the truther statement.
  3. Ron Paul is for letting states decide about legalizing drugs.
  4. Ron Paul is more of a Constitutionalist than a libertarian, but either way, you seem to be misconstruing libertarians with Libertarians. While the Libertarian Party has a set platform, libertarians can be Republicans, conservatives, even democrats and have a whole range of opinions. Ron Paul is a Republican congressman, not a Libertarian congressman.
So as to who is Ron Paul, he is, God willing, the next President of the United States of America.
 
grampben said:
I would hardly call the fathers of Neoconservatism Trotskyist. Many top neoconservatives were indeed formally liberals, but you could hardly call Irving Kristol a raving commie!
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One can be a Trostkyist in a general sense without being a communist. I’ve seen neoconservatives described this way before, and it’s not a particularly bad description. Both supposedly see themselves as instruments of some permanent revolution, only one is communist, the other supposedly democratic. I’m not going to defend the labeling of neoconservatives as Trotskyist, but I don’t think it’s conspiratorial at all.
Freedom is good for us, but not good enough for people across the globe? You’re telling me we should have let that sicko Milosevic massacre thousands of Kosovans simply because you have a conspiratorial view of the history of neoconservatism?
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Yeah, no policy has proven more fruitful in recent decades than going around the world giving people “freedom” by force, whether they want it or not; that is, freedom as narrowly defined by the upper classes of a few western European and North American countries, then pushed on the rest of the world as a set of “universal moral principles.”

And it’s certainly a stretch to equate rejection of neoconservativism with the willful allowance of genocide. But, on the topic of genocide, do you think that invading (or just obliterating with air strikes) every single country suspected of human rights violations is the most effective way to stop them?
 
AdvanceAlways said:
  1. Ron Paul is more of a Constitutionalist than a libertarian, but either way, you seem to be misconstruing libertarians with Libertarians. While the Libertarian Party has a set platform, libertarians can be Republicans, conservatives, even democrats and have a whole range of opinions. Ron Paul is a Republican congressman, not a Libertarian congressman. .
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He is more of a States Rights advocate than a Constitutionalist. I think he would be very happy with a Confederation rather than a Republic.
 
RoncalliM said:
How does one end global tyranny by invading their country indefinintely and dropping bombs on their civilians. In addition, some cultures lend themselves towards tyrannical regimes. Can a few smiling Americans reverse thousands of years of culture?
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Bosnia? Kosovo?

‘Culture’ is irrelevant once it means genital mutilation and subjection of women, oppression of religion and other human rights travesties. Either liberal democracy is the best form of government or it isn’t. If it’s not worth spreading it’s not worth having.
 
Raskolnikov said:
And it’s certainly a stretch to equate rejection of neoconservativism with the willful allowance of genocide. But, on the topic of genocide, do you think that invading (or just obliterating with air strikes) every single country suspected of human rights violations is the most effective way to stop them?
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Well we tried it the diplomatic way with Darfur, and that didn’t work. Being a hawkish foreign policy liberal isn’t just about invading everywhere. On some occasions, sanctions are better, on other occasions diplomacy is the best route, but on many occasions, military action can bring a lesser loss of life than inaction or sanctions. For example, the only way to get rid of Saddam was invasion: sanctions were killing Iraqis whilst oil for food was helping the dictatorship.
 
grampben said:
Bosnia? Kosovo?

‘Culture’ is irrelevant once it means genital mutilation and subjection of women, oppression of religion and other human rights travesties. Either liberal democracy is the best form of government or it isn’t. If it’s not worth spreading it’s not worth having.
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Things are rarely that black and white. Just because liberal democracy functions relatively well in one particular region of the world doesn’t mean we should declare it for all time and all places the ultimate height of human political advancement. The fact that so many democracies have failed and continue to fail throughout so much of the world reinforces this point. And even when liberal democracy does succeed, it is not a magical potion that suddenly fixes all the social and economic problems of a country. The state apparati and social structures of western European countries only emerged as they are today as the end result of centuries of war, autocracy, and massacre. You cannot just overthrow a dictator in a country that has never had anything but a dictator, start having elections, and expect things to work out. I would say, at the very least, aggressive neoconservativism has been largely discredited since its inception by experience alone.
 
Anyone who thinks the US military presence in Bosnia-Hercegovina was a good thing, needs to read Unholy Terror :Al Qaida and the rise of global jihad by John Schindler of the US Naval War College. Turned out that those paranoid Serbians weren’t telling fairy tales afterall, when they warned the West of what the Bosnian Muslims were really up to. As for Kosovo, the ethnic cleansing of Christians there should be complete within a generation thanks to the US military.
 
grampben said:
Either liberal democracy is the best form of government or it isn’t. If it’s not worth spreading it’s not worth having.
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Imposing democracy with the barrel of a gun isn’t very democratic is it. Lets also not forget that the US crusades to overthrow communism and despotism and spread democracy have resulted in complete disaster more often than not.
 
From what I can tell the reason we went into Iraq was to get rid of Saddam since he was thought to be a threat to the region. Not necessarily to establish democracy. And even when Bush started talking about making Iraq a democracy he kept repeating that it probably would look uniquely Iraqi and not mirror the US or European democracies.

Similarly, we went into Afghanistan to suppress al-Qaeda.
 
Not_Sure said:
first of all, we shouldn’t have troops in Germany or Japan anymore. Or anywhere in Europe.

Second, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are illegitimate and our troops should be sent home.

Our Army should be for our defense only.

What’s wrong with being nationalist?
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The answer to why we have ships in Japan and troops in South Korea should be obvious. South Korea needs our protection. We are the only country in the world that seems to fight in conflicts on the opposite side of the world. For this reason, we need troops in places such as Germany, primarily for logistics. If we do as Ron Paul says, will countries such as Israel, North Korea be able to protect themselves from madmen such as Kim Jon il and Ahmadenejad? We have played such an active role in the world since WW2, that if we withdrew all our forces, our enemies would interpret that as a sign of weakness.
 
Mike5575 said:
The answer to why we have ships in Japan and troops in South Korea should be obvious. South Korea needs our protection. We are the only country in the world that seems to fight in conflicts on the opposite side of the world. For this reason, we need troops in places such as Germany, primarily for logistics. If we do as Ron Paul says, will countries such as Israel, North Korea be able to protect themselves from madmen such as Kim Jon il and Ahmadenejad? We have played such an active role in the world since WW2, that if we withdrew all our forces, our enemies would interpret that as a sign of weakness.
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Agreed, our troops in Europe and Asia are there primarily for strategic placement of forces. I understand Ron Paul would just as well have it that all countries we are protecting either protect themselves or get overrun, but that isn’t the view of the US Congress. Not with China backing up North Korea and threatening Taiwan and Russia still trying to retake Ukraine and Eastern Europe.
 
Mike5575 said:
The answer to why we have ships in Japan and troops in South Korea should be obvious. South Korea needs our protection. We are the only country in the world that seems to fight in conflicts on the opposite side of the world. For this reason, we need troops in places such as Germany, primarily for logistics. If we do as Ron Paul says, will countries such as Israel, North Korea be able to protect themselves from madmen such as Kim Jon il and Ahmadenejad? We have played such an active role in the world since WW2, that if we withdrew all our forces, our enemies would interpret that as a sign of weakness.
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Who are our enemies? What can North Korea do to us? Was Vietnam our enemy? Was Imperial Germany during WW1 our enemy? Historically, the “enemy” has been the “other” the profit-mongering elites tell the plebes he is. Whenever the government declares “war” on something, be it a country or terrorism the alarm bells should be going off in your head that the government is read to put you temporarily in a uniform then in the ground. USA!
 
EmperorNapoleon said:
Imposing democracy with the barrel of a gun isn’t very democratic is it. Lets also not forget that the US crusades to overthrow communism and despotism and spread democracy have resulted in complete disaster more often than not.
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Firstly, Liberal Democracy in the US was established by the barrel of a gun. Interesting to point out that thousands of Iraqis fought with the coalition and almost 90% of people voted for the new constitution. There wasn’t any imposition of democracy, rather the taking out of a genocidal maniac.
 
grampben said:
Firstly, Liberal Democracy in the US was established by the barrel of a gun. Interesting to point out that thousands of Iraqis fought with the coalition and almost 90% of people voted for the new constitution. There wasn’t any imposition of democracy, rather the taking out of a genocidal maniac.
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A new constitution whose creation had to happen through an election that our government initially had no plans for. Bush and Rumsfeld just wanted to make Ahmed Chalabi president of Iraq and be done with it. The popular outcry for elections was begun by Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shiite leader, and quickly gained an irresistible momentum.

So, in a left-handed way, you’re right. Bush & co was certainly NOT intent on imposing democracy. Far from it. He wanted to replace one dictator with another, and have Chalabi be another Somoza or Marcos.

It took an outcry from a prominent Iraqi to have real elections. THAT is why Iraqis rallied behind the idea.
 
colmywaykurtz said:
A new constitution whose creation had to happen through an election that our government initially had no plans for. Bush and Rumsfeld just wanted to make Ahmed Chalabi president of Iraq and be done with it. The popular outcry for elections was begun by Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shiite leader, and quickly gained an irresistible momentum.

So, in a left-handed way, you’re right. Bush & co was certainly NOT intent on imposing democracy. Far from it. He wanted to replace one dictator with another, and have Chalabi be another Somoza or Marcos.

It took an outcry from a prominent Iraqi to have real elections. THAT is why Iraqis rallied behind the idea.
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You have a reliable source for this? My recollection was that elections became popular because Grand Ayatollah Ali Hussein al-Sistani supported them. Muqtada al-Sadr really wasn’t that influential in 2003 outside of Sadr City.
 
RoncalliM said:
How does one end global tyranny by invading their country indefinintely and dropping bombs on their civilians. In addition, some cultures lend themselves towards tyrannical regimes. Can a few smiling Americans reverse thousands of years of culture?
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THANK YOU!

Paul
 
AdvanceAlways said:
  1. Yes some who use neocon are anti semites. Certainly not all. I’ll call out a neocon when I see one. My best friend and political confidante and hardcore Catholic is the ultimate example of a neocon. He isn’t Jewish by any means and I still don’t hesititate to refer to him as a neocon if it meets the context of the conversation, just as I wouldn’t hesitate to call a Jew or a Protestant a neocon if they embraced the label.
  2. You’ve setup a strawman with the truther statement.
  3. Ron Paul is for letting states decide about legalizing drugs.
  4. Ron Paul is more of a Constitutionalist than a libertarian, but either way, you seem to be misconstruing libertarians with Libertarians. While the Libertarian Party has a set platform, libertarians can be Republicans, conservatives, even democrats and have a whole range of opinions. Ron Paul is a Republican congressman, not a Libertarian congressman.
So as to who is Ron Paul, he is, God willing, the next President of the United States of America.
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Won’t happen.

He is to strange to some people?

Paul
 
gilliam said:
You have a reliable source for this? My recollection was that elections became popular because Grand Ayatollah Ali Hussein al-Sistani supported them. Muqtada al-Sadr really wasn’t that influential in 2003 outside of Sadr City.
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Exactly. Iraqis had every opportunity to vote against the new constitution if they didn’t want it. Some people can’t face up to the fact that the Iraqis were yearning to be free from that monster. That much was surely clear after the West’s betrayal of the people of Iraq after the first Gulf War and abandonment of them during the Shia uprisings.
 
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