Did W. Create Ron Paul?
Gordon Robison argues that his stance on the Iraq War almost single-handedly explains Rep. Ron Paul's amazing fundraising ability (which recently outstripped that of Sen. John McCain, the last unreconstructed hawk on the Iraq War.)
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.
posted by Juan Cole @ 11/10/2007 12:40:00 AM
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33 Comments:
I believe part of Ron Paul's popularity is that he harkens in many ways to America's history. You look at Thomas Jefferson's Presidency and read his contributions to our national ideology, and Mr. Paul definitely sounds like him.
While you are right about union contributions, many middle class employees come into contact with unionized labor regularly. Unions have brought great strides socially, but to the functioning of the work place, some of their obscure laws are a hinderance. An engineer from a company that makes a tool used in an assembly plant has to wait for the plant electrician to make certain changes, that as an engineer, he is knowledgeable to make without the electrician present. This adds 2- hours to 2 days work time while he waits for the electrician to budget his needs into his calendar.
There is also the perception that the intransigence of unions on issues of wages and benefits have driven jobs overseas. As one Libertarian put it to me, "the Unions have allowed lower skill and lower education positions to become middle middle class earners, when in the rest of the world, they are lower middle class to upper lower class positions. Of course, MNC are going to go overseas."
Of course, I believe an examination of European may tell one that their is more to it, or perhaps even highlight a better way of handling it than a return to the sweat shops of our history.
Was it Frank Sanatra that said; "Politics is the entertainment arm of industry."
This scarcity mentality is killing us.
This is a fascinating subject. It makes me want to want to go find my books by Hannah Arendt where she talks about loss of identity and the human need for all of the psychological potions that Hitler and Stalin provided for their nations.
The southern historian, C. Vann Woodward predicted that our defeat in Vietnam would cause the entire country to become more like the South, and sure enough, we elected Reagan. The South has had a feeling of defeat ever since the civil war and lusts for the power to redeem ourselves. Vietnam had the same effect on the entire country.
I would go out on a limb and say that Bush is a product of the continual “southernization” of the entire U.S. His theocratic demagoguery is truly southern. His political base is really offering a renewed sense of power to the voters---if we go kick a few Arab heads, we will feel powerful; we will feel good. We have the almighty shock and awe! Does that also have a little hint of southern racism?
Perhaps the most dangerous southern characteristic is his privatization of government and politics. How much of his and Cheney’s foreign adventures have a strong personal profit motive behind them? That is as old as the South. I wonder if the extensive lack of public involvement and the growth of private backroom deals has the same effect on the entire country as it has had on the South since its beginning?
With our defeat in Iraq and very possibly in Afghanistan, how will we behave? Will we become more southern or take time to be introspective and chart a more rational course?
Bob Spencer
spencer_bob@yahoo.com
This is pretty much what I had been thinking. Thank you for setting it out so plainly.
But Noam Chomsky not marginalised? When did that happen? I don't recall him being on CNN (or Fox: ROFL).
I agree that W. has made Ron Paul stand out like he never could have before, but I don't agree that its because Bush is just fumbling the execution of government. Bush and Cheney haven't (hardly) had to break the current laws, they've just used governmental and bureacratic power to their full legal extents. Out of custom, we presumed no one would do this, but this is why the founders did not trust anyone with centralized power. They went to great efforts to break up any future Leviathans with separate, fighting branches and federal levels that left most power to the states and the people.
As David Henderson of antiwar.com told Alberto Gonzales when Gonzales said the administration would never abuse their powers and to just trust them: "The Constitution was based on mistrust."
So, is it right-wing anarchism, or federalism when the state of Maryland decides to change its rules about employer-employee relations? How would you feel if the federal government passed a law next week saying that states could not control businesses and that the healthcare provisions were abolished? Rather than argue over the "morality" of healthcare, just realize that the local control of a government means more choice and more freedom for the people being governed.
Thank God someone significant is finally calling out Ron Paul on his worship of capitalism. Because he's against the war and Bush's attacks on the Constitution no one challenges him on issues of racial and economic inequality, global warming, peak oil, or abortion rights. The good thing about Paul, like other libertarians, is that because they don't accept that our brand of capitalism needs imperialism and racism to survive, they will do nothing to defend those practices and thus our system will collapse, which is the only serious chance left for change.
The other candidiates are slowly creeping towards bringing the troops home, so Ron Paul will lose his Iraq edge.
Although they prefer to keep the troops there, their main objective is to win elections and they can see clearly what would get them votes. However, they are still hoping that, by som miracle, the war goes their way, so they want to move slowly backing both horses.
I was surprised to learn that the appeal of Ron Paul is that of "rightwing anarchism" which you also describe as the opposite of fascism. Here's an anarchist who just introduced a bill to restore the Constitution, complete with all that rightwing stuff about habeas corpus and nine of the first 10 amendments. What would be the sensible Juan Cole alternative to all that rightwing anarchy?
Excellent piece.Thanks.
Kamin's Third Law
Combined total taxation from all levels of government will
always increase (until the government is replaced by war or
revolution).
Are you ready?
Dear Juan,
Great posts as always. I find your aside on Chomsky a bit bizarre. Although Chomsky is an anarchist, he rarely mentions his own personal stance and that's not why there's a thirst for his ideas.
Instead, I think it's because there's a huge need for radical, institutional and structural critiques of US foreign policy. Most academics, even left academics, tend to try to be more mainstream when they write and speak than they let on.
Finally, in as much as Chomsky's been marginalised, that's largely a function of the corporate dominated media and I don't see any necessary're-emergence' being driven by Bush's policies.
Keep up the great work.
Agreed. However, Ron Paul has three major strikes against him that guarantees he will see no serious Libertarian votes:
He is anti-woman's choice
He is a Mormon
He is anti-Federal Reserve
Let serious Libertarian = someone who has a snowball's chance in hell at winning the hearts and minds of our nation / someone who will be able to effectively align our society and economy as to increase individual prosperity.
Right now, all Paul has going for him is populism. William Jennings Bryan had that too.
Paul is just another crazy old Coot running on a protest ballot. I wish people paid more attention to Dennis Kucinich's campaign - he's not as photogenic but his ideas on the war in Iraq and on US-Israel relations are remarkably similar. Except for the fact that his platform doesn't run afoul of common sense when it comes to things like a fiat currency.
You're right. I support Ron Paul, at least as a parlor game, since I don't expect him to actually win. But supporting him, including some of his policies that I think are a little nutty, is the only conceivable way to show establishment politicians that we're tired of special interest money and powerful lobbies sending us off to wars that we shouldn't be fighting. Bush's administration is of a dangerously proto-fascist bent, and Ron Paul, for all his quirks, is the closest thing to a Guy Fawkes that polite society will tolerate. At a minimum, it's a signal to the American government, including Democrats, that we don't want to make Iran our next target.
Prof Cole writes, "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."
I'm a huge fan of Cole's analysis, but I just have to differ here. I think it is wrong to see Bush as some monstrous deviation from US foreign policy. His administration has been more brazen, but falls easily in the continuum of US military-foreign policy behavior. How on earth can one consider the US military in Vietnam, Grenada, Haiti, Guatemala, El Salvador, etc. as being "there to protect us?"
A great post, JC.
I would add the example of healthcare. Certainly too complex, random, and expensive for the citizens to fund individually, and admits of literal predation from the private sector. This, just like social security, should be provided with from our tax revenues. Instead, in an ironic twist, our tax revenues are used to create thousands more people in need of expensive services (our injured troops).
Thanks, JC.
I think your use of anarchy is overused. The thing is that people have essentially forgotten that there is a state government. As you stated "It is the government of the state of Maryland that protected workers from Walmart's exploitation of them." So, if there is anything that needs to be done because of a smaller federal government, a state government can do so.
Smaller federal government dosen't mean anarchy.
I think this is an over-complication of the whole thing. I think these people have turned to Ron Paul because he's one of the few conservatives who still represent what conservatives stood for before the Bush-Cheney machine made a mockery of the whole movement. Ten years ago, Ron Paul wasn't particularly notable because he sounded just like most other conservatives in Congress. But when Bush-Cheney took the Whitehouse, most conservatives were glad to hop on board the Big Government train; leaving a small percentage of old-school conservatives behind. And that would be Paul and his people.
So basically, they support Paul because he's the only game in town. And that's only because none of the other GOP presidential nominees think Paul's people are a particularly good constituency to mine for votes. As I suggested at my blog, Paul is like the last CB radio repairman in town. Sure, you'll get 100% of the CB repair business, but there really isn't too much demand for that kind of thing anymore. Particularly as the 90's conservative agenda was obviously such a cheap ruse. Something good for getting votes, but it was obvious they had no real intent to actually govern that way.
That's why Paul will never break-out of his small group of loyal supporters. Paul isn't on the cutting edge of a growing movement; he's an anachronism. Because the only way Republicans will ever support small government and isolationism is if a Democrat is in the Whitehouse; and that's not something Ron Paul can really help them with.
I wrote more about this here:
Invasion of the Paul People
Bush is certainly a flashpoint for libertarians, but not because of Iraq. Bush is anathema to libertarians because federal spending and debt increased so much under his administration and he signed a lot of free-trade agreements, which libertarians like Ron Paul view as giving foreign countries certain powers over the US.
Ron Paul seems to advocate a fairly typical libertarian agenda: minimal federal government, a minimal federal income tax, a small military, minimal social programs and no federal debt. In Congress for example Paul supposedly votes against virtually every appropriation bill. He also envisions a minimum of government regulation.
Many libertarians are extremely successful business people who either founded or inherited large privately-held businesses - Eric Prince, the CEO of Blackwater is typical. In the past they used to be a small but very influential group, but now they seem to be gaining substantially in public appeal.
It seems to me that you are using Ron Paul to try and drum up support for Clinton. Many Americans lost their jobs because of Clinton's signing of NAFTA. The majority of democrats and republicans are just on different sides of the same coin, big government and endless nation building.Clinton would be a disaster for this country economically by increasing taxes to pay for unconstitutional federally mandated health care especially during times of war. The states should be able to implement healthcare resolutions via the 10th amendment, even if that means providing healthcare for all in that state.
You are correct on a lot of the things you say about Bush here, and I share the sentiment towards him. However, you are wrong to say he can be blamed for FEMA's inefficiency as a beauracracy and that all the things wrong with the government. You are also wrong to say the opposite of fascism, which is a form of statism, is anarchy. The opposite is capatilism. I suggest you stop thinking that you understand libertarian concepts when you obviously don't. Why do you think we are the greatest nation on earth? It isn't because we were statist nation buddy. Freedom is kindness, it is what made us great and whether it be Bush or Clinton, we are moving away from what made us a great nation.
ALSO TO THE ill-informed comments - RON PAUL IS NOT A MORMON AND HE IS PRO-Freedom. HE VOTED AGAINST AN AMENDMENT TO BAN ABORTIONS Please get your facts straight before you spew.
Ron Paul's position isn't simple right-wing anarchism. One of the problems here is how "left" and "right" substitute for thought anyway - the terminology originates in the seating of the French National Assembly in 1790, but I never seem to be able to get a coherent answer when I ask for any sort of rigorous explanation of what left and right mean today.
Ron Paul is an American constitutional traditionalist of the Thomas Jefferson type. Jefferson was very hostile to government in general, especially central government, but he certainly recognized the need for it to provide certain basic functions like national defense.
Ron Paul is also strongly influenced by traditional American Christian thinking on government, which views government in two ways: 1) distrusting the tendency of governments to exalt themselves as gods in whom we live and move and have our being, and 2) recognizing that God has instituted government "to punish evildoers and praise those who do well." These combine to make such thinkers push for small government, but government which "breaks the teeth of the wicked" (Psalm 72). Hence the strong hostility of western and southern Populists 100 years ago toward railroads, Standard Oil, and such like and a readiness to use government to subdue their insolence, while insisting that government be as decentralized and small as possible. Such people also tended to be very anti-imperialist, recognizing that imperialism not only crushes little people abroad but encourages the growth of pharaonic government at home. All of this was typified in William Jennings Bryan, but was very typical of many American fundamentalist Christians at the time.
As you point out, Clinton and Bush have in our day illustrated both aspects of government. Even effective government is dangerous, because people get used to it being the universal problem-solver, just as antibiotics, by being so effective, encouraged doctors to overuse them and forget how to do anything else.
If we understand all this, any anti-fascist or anti-authoritarian person should find a lot of common ground with Ron Paul. There are important practical issues to fight over, but they become matters of technical detail rather than fundamental principle. We can agree that the strong should be restrained and the weak defended by govnernment, and that governments should in any way possible be kept out of activities that encourage their growth and their symbiosis with the powerful - imperial adventures, large standing armies, secret funding, and such like which the Constitution with very good reason forbids or severely restricts.
I think the availability of ways to express yourself as Dr. Cole just did in this comment is evidence that this country still alive and did retain some of it’s once world renowned freedom of expression and liberty means.
The comments have several inaccuracies.
Paul is not a Mormon. He is a Baptist.
Paul does not support a national ban on abortion (much to the dismay of social conservatives) and has opposed federal legislation to criminalize abortion. As with gay marriage, he wants to return it to the states. Under such a regime, however, he would personally support a ban in his own state, however.
Erik Prince is not a libertarian. Apparently, the source for this strange urban legend is that Prince gave $1000 to Paul's campaign in 1995. Prince gave a ton of money to other candidates that year so nothing much should be read into this. More significantly, though Prince has given thousands of dollars since 1995 to many candidates Paul has not received a dime. See here:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/016102.html
The threadbard claim that the wealthy prefer Paul has no basis in the evidence. Those who say this need to first explain why Paul does not have a single supporter from the Fortune 500.
They need to also explain why Hillary, Obama, and Edwards have quite a few contributors from that group. Hillary alone has fifty contributors from the Fortune 500. Even many in the bottom tier of both parties have received money from the Fortune 500 folks but not Paul.
This all makes perfect sense. Laissez faire is the last thing that big business wants. They prefer the warfare/welfare state and they show it with their campaign contributions.
For the data on Fortune 500 support, see here
http://www.forbes.com/2007/10/01/election-candidates-politics-oped-cz_adm_1002clinton.html
I don't understand the contention that Clinton made government "work." Some of examples of Clinton's "efficient" use of government included the needless slaughter of children at Waco, the counterproductive embargo and bombing of Iraq, more capital punishment, a disasterous increase in the war on drugs, and the Somalia disaster.
Major successes of his administration, however, were ending "welfare as we know it" and cutting spending and the deficit. By all measurs, Bush is actually a big government president compared to Clinton.
This article is spot on. Paul also attracts people because of his manifest decency and integrity.
Anarchist's would say you don't 'get it' of course. In their village world where communities are functioning the weaker get protected by the community. They aren't neo-liberals and would restore tariffs which would help to end some of the predatory practices, but it is interesting to know how they would deal with large corporations abusing communities and workers. They seem very taken with Anthony Gregory (AnthonyGregory.com): I am sure he would have a joined-up answer.
is their new Young Turk apparently.
In Singapore they have safety net based around social insurance and the family, which works surprisingly well, apparently.
From Ron Paul's web site: issues->life and liberty
------------
In Congress, I have authored legislation that seeks to define life as beginning at conception, HR 1094.
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. This is a practical, direct approach to ending federal court tyranny which threatens our constitutional republic and has caused the deaths of 45 million of the unborn.
------------
This seems pretty clear to me (another attraction of Ron Paul, BTW).
Interesting analysis. I actually voted for Ron Paul when he ran for president under the Libertarian banner in 1988. That was the high water mark for the Libertarian party when they earned 1,000,000 votes nation-wide. I could never vote for him today though. Though his war stance is refreshing he is a social conservative and a theocrat who favors our becoming a "Christian nation". He is not smart enough or savvy concerning the big issues of our time: Peak Oil, Global Warming, Water, and a sustainable earth.
Juan epitomises the mental control the crew have over americas people, always looking at things throught the false left right paradigm. If paul was in the democratic party he'd support his candidacy. The fact is hillary Clinton, Barack 'standing on the shoulders of Giants (Neo-Paganist)' Obama and the others are all establishment tools, while Paul is the breath of fresh Air the world needs.
someone wrote
'He is anti-Federal Reserve'
As if thats bad? Go read a book called The Monster from Jekyll Island.Go read what a disease the Private Fed is, ever since its inception in 1913.
Juan i think it gross to dismiss Ron Paul as an anarchist. He is a constitutionalist first and foremost. Even the Fed issue goes back to the founding fathers fear of what a privately owned central bank do to America.
He loves America as you do, please look past the fact he is in the RNC. as others have mentioned his voting record vis a vis abortion etc resemble a so called 'Liberal'.
This is a rather hasty and sloppy comment from Juan Cole's often informative blog.
Unfortunately, it's informed here by such things as Karl Wittfogel's Oriental Despotism (New Haven 1957), where Cole gets "government was invented by irrigation-based societies like Egypt and Iraq." (Wittfogel's work is termed by a good historian, Perry Anderson, a "vulgar charivari, devoid of any historical sense" Lineages of the Absolutist State [London 1974] p. 487n4.)
It's also remarkably obtuse to say that "abuse of government by W. and his administration ... has ... done wonders for leftwing anarchism ...: witness the reemergence of Noam Chomsky as a major voice after he had been marginalized for decades." Chomsky's little book of interviews, 9-11, published in October of 2001, was a best-seller even before "W. and his administration" had much time for "abuse of government"; from book sales to rock bands, Chomsky had hardly been "marginalized for decades" before 2001.
Cole's also wrong about Social Security's needing a "fix," and, more importantly, wrong to suggest that the abuses of government began with Bush. He must have slept through the '90s to say that Clinton made government "relatively effective and popular."
And what can he possibly mean by saying that "The opposite of fascism is not democracy but anarchy"? That you must choose one?
And a professor of history must understand the marxist notion of the state better than he seems to. (For openers, Marx insisted on state power over against his critics from the Left, like Bakunin.)
But, in spite of all this, Cole is right about what "almost single-handedly" explains Paul's appeal -- and it's not what we call (only in this country) Libertarianism.
###
The best way to think of Ron Paul. I'd say, is that he's running for president in 1900, just doing so in 2007.
That's interesting, because the echoes of Wm Jennings Bryan imply a desire, whether conscious or not, for a non-superpower USA -- or at least, a United States that isn't the same presence on the global stage as the post-1914 nation.
Sorry, got my facts mixed up. Ron Paul is a Southern Baptist, not a Mormon. Still 2 for 3.
Wikipedia sez:
"his pro-life legislation, like the Sanctity of Life Act, is intended to negate Roe v. Wade for ethical reasons and to get "the federal government completely out of the business of regulating state matters."
In response to the original article:
As if Ron Paul were some kind of Frankenstein. And as if his ideas were some kind of aberration. Ron Paul´s political philosophy is poorly understood and severely maligned in the public fora. As a nation, the US has dumped the Consitution in the trash bin.
Bush says of the Constitution "a goddamned piece of paper" and he is the reasonable voice. Ron Paul the Constitutionalist is a "kook".
Anonymous:
He is anti-woman's choice
He is a Mormon
He is anti-Federal Reserve
As a Consitutionalist, he believes that issues such as these are better left to the states to resolve as they see fit, not necessarily anti-choice.
He is not a Mormon.
His views on the federal reserve are again, strictly Constitutional. The Constitution unequivocally states that only Congress shall have the power to regulate and coin money. The Federal Reserve is a semi-autonomous, private corporation with little oversight. They have the sole power to create money and it is loaned on interest to the govermnent and to the taxpayers.
Want to know why the dollar is tanking and oil is approaching $100 a barrel? Why the middle and working classes have been robbed of their means? The Federal Reserve, whose irresponsible monetary policies create money out of thin air to prop up the businesses (banks) of their owners. The Fed does not work for you my friend, it works for the bank owners and the elites.
Your comment that we need a "common sense" approach to fiat money, yes I agree. And Ron Paul is the lone voice among the presidential contenders. He is the only one who proposes fiscal responsibility and eliminating the federal debt, now over 9 trillion dollars. That is over $30,000 per US citizen that the Congress has allowed the government to borrow in your name.
At 5:13 PM, Mytwords said...
Prof Cole writes, "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."
I'm a huge fan of Cole's analysis, but I just have to differ here. I think it is wrong to see Bush as some monstrous deviation from US foreign policy. His administration has been more brazen, but falls easily in the continuum of US military-foreign policy behavior. How on earth can one consider the US military in Vietnam, Grenada, Haiti, Guatemala, El Salvador, etc. as being "there to protect us?"
________________________
That's what I'm saying, only we need to lift up our eyes still further and look even deeper into our past.
As a people, what are we all about?
We send our machines out as our proxies into the fields of our lord to
make war on our other half in an effort to impress an
absentee-landlord/absolute tyrant of the universe we made up as a
projection of our own mental line-making power. Strangely, we've turned
into slaves of the corporations we invented in order to enslave others.
Once upon a time, a Sumerian god, Aot by name, when faced with a famine
brought about by the laziness of the gods, decided to create a race of
slaves.
Then upon a later time, Zoroaster conceived of the universe as having
once been pure good, but now as being corrupted by a dark and evil
influence. You're either making war on that corrupting influence,
battling to return the cosmos to a pure state, or you are the corrupting
influence.
And again upon a time, when the Habiru invaded Canaan, the priests
inverted the endogenous myths of the goddess, perverting signs and
symbols away from Mother and towards a bachelor Father with a very bad
temper.
To this day, we live life as holy war waged upon our own shadow. That's
why the face of the Other terrifies us so: either we show this god how
much we hate the Other, as measured by our violence against them, thus
ensuring our own access to heaven, or we become the evil other.
Extermination of the Other or corruption of our precious selves and
eternal torment, that's the choice.
Making war and enslaving others is no aberration for us: it's what we do. New Orleans should now be called New Israel. The hand of God (or the GOP) cleared the heathen from the land for the chosen people, right?
Rods from God, anybody? Our SPACECOM wants to be able to kill anybody
anywhere anytime. They try to use their infernal machine to play god,
and end up, as Oppenheimer said, becoming Death, destroyer of worlds.
Look at our air force and the seeds of death we sow all over the planet.
Cluster bombs we dropped some 40 years ago will kill children in
Cambodia today. Cluster bombs dropped by Israel in the last minutes of
the US-sponsored war on Lebanon will likely go on killing for decades, too.
Making war and enslaving others is what we do.
Actually, Austrian-influenced libertarians like RP would tell you that companies like Wal-Mart simply could not exist in an economy founded on sound money and non-intervention.
Could Wal-Mart survive if the government did not run the interstate highway system or prop up repressive foreign oil producing states, and allow mega-corporations access to cheap credit? No, it could not.
Mega-corporations thrive under interventionist governments.
"In response to the original article:
As if Ron Paul were some kind of Frankenstein. And as if his ideas were some kind of aberration."
Um, the "original article," if you'd bothered to, you know, read it, was referring to Bush there. Not Paul.
The more I read in blog comments on posts about Ron Paul, the more it seems his supporters have a dismaying tendency to read just enough to get pissy -- but not enough to actually make, if you'll pardon the phrase, informed comment. And as unkind as this may be, I think that's part of how he's starting to build so much support from constituencies that wouldn't normally line up behind a guy who's at least as much social conservative as civil libertarian: they're reading just enough to know that he's "the" anti-war candidate who talks about the Constitution all the time. So they don't want to entertain questions about his other stances, or even entertain suggestions that he's not the only candidate with such positions.
The Paul supporters ought to quit drinking the kool-aid given to them at his functions. Just an analysis of a few legislative proposals from Paul in 2007 destroy most of the myths his campaign has been projecting.
H.R.300: To limit the jurisdiction of the Federal courts, and for other purposes.
This an attempt to decrease The Federal Courts' Constitutional Powers by simple legislation, outside of the Amendment Process. Worse is that it does not even pretend to be an equal application, because it would restrict the Courts' oversight only in controversies relating to: the free exercise or establishment of religion; any claim based upon the right of privacy, including any such claim related to any issue of sexual practices, orientation, or reproduction; and any claim based upon equal protection of the laws to the extent such claim is based upon the right to marry without regard to sex or sexual orientation.
Paul is playing a brutal strategy of relativism with this, because he he doesn't desire to destroy the whole 14th Amendment with unconstitutional legislation, which does not reach to the heights of a constitutional Amendment. He wants the 14th to carry force in his desire to give American citizenship to foetuses at the very moment of their conception.
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.
There is no wink and a nod to State's Rights here, nor is there even a glimmer of a chance for a less intrusive government, as suddenly every woman who has a miscarriage could immediately find herself the target of a homicide investigation. These proposals arrogantly disregard potential maternal life-threatening possibilities that come with pregnancy. As an example of this: Ectopic Pregnancy is now estimated to occur in 2% of all pregnancies in the U.S. The fetus will not survive gestation, and by not terminating the pregnancy, the mother risks future infertility, and severe complications, a few of which could result in her death.
Big bad Paul endangers pregnant womens' health to push his religious ideology upon America with the biggest single entitlement to American citizenship ever legislated.
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.
This cannot be defended as original intent. One of the Declaration of Independence's listed causes for America's claim of a natuiral right to sever their British citizenry was that King George had:
"...endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws of Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands."
This should also be recognised for its ugly reality. It is a bill of attainder that works a corruption of blood upon humans born within the Sovereign Territory of the United States of America. It is Unamerican to force children to be punished for the crimes of their parents. It also makes a mockery of any who claim there can be a positive comparison made between Thomas Jefferson and Ron Paul.
"My opinion on the right of Expatriation has been, so long ago as the year 1776, consigned to record in the act of the Virginia code, drawn by myself, recognizing the right expressly, and prescribing the mode of exercising it. The evidence of this natural right, like that of our right to life, liberty, the use of our faculties, the pursuit of happiness, is not left to the feeble and sophistical investigations of reason, but is impressed on the sense of every man. We do not claim these under the charters of kings or legislators, but under the King of kings. If he has made it a law in the nature of man to pursue his own happiness, he has left him free in the choice of place as well as mode; and we may safely call on the whole body of English jurists to produce the map on which Nature has traced, for each individual, the geographical line which she forbids him to cross in pursuit of happiness. It certainly does not exist in his mind. Where, then, is it? I believe, too, I might safely affirm, that there is not another nation, civilized or savage, which has ever denied this natural right. I doubt if there is another which refuses its exercise. I know it is allowed in some of the most respectable countries of continental Europe, nor have I ever heard of one in which it was not. How it is among our savage neighbors, who have no law but that of Nature, we all know."
The Writings of Thomas Jefferson; Definitive Edition, Albert Ellery Bergh, Editor
Copyright, 1905, By The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association; Volume XV; pp 124,125
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