The Ron Paul Quandary ...

In a nutshell ... to support the guy or not?
I mean, on the one hand ... here is somebody that is succeeding in making a BIG splash questioning the entire root of our misguided foreign policy.
Our candidates either avoid the topic, are in the other camp, or get completely ignored.
Paul also seems to be one of the few expressing views consistent with personal privacy and freedoms such as we recall from old memories of what the constitution used to guarantee.
By piling into the Paul camp it seems like it would only help to keep the topic alive, maybe even make it ... AN ISSUE! Imagine that.
Then comes the REST of the story .... libertarianism ...
Is it better to be dead on half the time than half right most of the time?
The more that I read about libertarianism, the more that I don't get it. Maybe putting some air under this will help my thinking process.
My understanding of the world we live in is that we are under assault from two basic forces, government AND corporations. Libertarians seem to differ big time here believing that corporations are only a threat to the extent that they are ENABLED by government. They seem to ignore the increasingly foreign nature of the corporation themselves. There is also nothing in there philosophy to deal with the art of MONOPOLY.
Am I reading in the wrong places? I am not flaming Libertarians, I am just honestly saying that I don't get it. Yet I am drawn to the fact that we agree on so much else. But what about corporations? Do they even rate as individuals? Do they have rights like individuals?
Not saying a single election would even go anywhere near creating the "libertarian utopia" but if it did push society in a certain direction what direction would that be?
Thoughts?

HELL NO! He's a libertarian turned GOP. If you love unregulated capitalism making us sick without punishment, support him. If you want an end to all social support, from schools through social security, support him. If you want this country to slide in the unintended consequences nightmare of the libertarian dream, then support him.

However, if you belong on THIS board, support the few things he may be correct on, like the war and the nanny state. REJECT all the other stuff.

Ron Paul is not our friend.

To your point about "unregulated capitalism making us sick without punishment".
Dont we have that now? Hasnt it been this way for quite some time?

As to "THIS" war .... how can we support that utilizing the candidates we have? How will that address the next war, and the next and all the little ones we never hear too much about?

Isnt it time to make an actual stand on something?

The system is bad, but it could be much, much worse. If the system well and truly collapses, it will be a nightmare that we probably can't imagine right now.

but they were still on the job. They've been GUTTED over the past sad 6 years.

That's the difference. Give Paul a chance and they'll be GONE.

particularly on the social issues when they talk about wanting to keep the governement out of our bedrooms. Libertarianism's main tenents are Individual Rights and Individual Resposibility and on the surface, that sounds like what we all want. The free market rules.

What you need to delve more deeply into is what Libertarians mean by "Individual Respnosibility." Basically, as I see it, that means "survival of the fittest" and "every person is on their own."

No sense of the Common Good. No sense of shared responsibility for one another or community. No support for a social safety net. No sense that government has a rightful role to play in helping to make individuals lives better. You're on your own for everything. You don't have healthcare, too bad, maybe you can find some private organization to help you out. You can't afford to go to college and you can't get a scholarship, too bad. You can't afford to feed your kids breakfast before sending them off to school, too bad. Your community needs new roads, too bad until some private company takes it upon itself to build one. Public transportation, no way. Public health, exists for controllling epidemmics and stuff like that, not for the indivuduals who might need help. Your employer abuses you by forcing you to work overtime or not take breaks, too bad, the market is free, go get another job.

Social security, forget it. Medicare, out the window. Unemployment compensation, down the drain.

If a corporation upstream from you is dumping toxins into the water and it effects your health, too bad. The company is free to do whatever it wants. You are free to move.

This may be something of an exaggeration since many of these things are already written into law, but in the secret heart of hearts of libertarians is a yearning for the days of Dickens when the powerful can do whatever they want and those without power are totally free to suffer.

They don't even claim to be "compassionate conservatives," compassion a function of the individual, not the government.


Think about it.

What I am thinking is that people arent that evil. Of course a quick look around shows me otherwise but I am holding out hope and seeing who steps in with the part of the puzzle we dont see :)

Keep posting, don't let them brainwash everybody

how to defend/protect/advocate for the country when the men in charge of it use everything to vandalise the situation....ron paul don't need a safety net cuz he aint running any risk, can't fall, being a rightwing gopig. But everything the dems do they must think through, or bush will gladly sacrifice US troops to blame it on them....bush hates the USA, and the dems know it while the gopigs maintain bush loves the USA...

I've read the campaign statements of several Libertarians running for office, and heard some of them speak. There is a wide variation in their views. Some oppose illegal immigration, while many favor open borders. Most support unrestricted free trade, but a number of them oppose it. Some are opposed to abortion, some support a woman's right to choose.

I even heard a Libertarian candidate for Congress in Indiana say he favored increasing the income level allowed for Earned Income Tax Credit. He also wanted a much tighter immigration policy. He even suggested excluding the lowest income groups from Social Security (Withholding) Tax.

I think you need assess every "libertarian" separately. They're a pretty independent bunch. Some sound pretty good (like Ron Paul), and some are really scary.

I'd evaluate Ron Paul on how he's voted, and to a lesser extent, on what he says. Despite his commentary that he supports free trade, he is definitely not a "free-trader" by current definition. He's voted against every free trade agreement that has come up.

Regarding "Corporations," their biggest ally has always been the government. Government protections have been absolutely essential to the survival and growth of Corporations. With protective legislation and government handouts, Corporations would be only a fraction of the problem they are today. How many Corporations could survive without anti-free market patent protections? How many could have been started without government guaranteed and/or taxpayer financed loans? I think Paul is generally right on his points about Corporations.

I generally don't like "Libertarians" or "libertarians." But I like Ron Paul. He's definitely not of the same cloth as the more wing-nut type libertarians.

Economic Populist Forum

I am aware of his votes. What I am confused about is his reasoning. It sounds, to me at least, as if he feels that even the paltry safeguards proposed in these horrid agreements GOES TOO FAR!
Don't you get that sense?

Only if he's running for Mayor of Crazytown.

Consider Paul's stances on issues in their totality and he is to the right of all but the most conservative of Democrats. I have appreciated the way he has spoken out on some matters- particularly on the Iraq war. He was calling Shrubbie and co. out on this issue from the beginning. He's one of the few Republicans for whom I still have a small bit of respect. But remember: Iraq is one issue, albeit a very big one. On issues like abortion and a social safety net he is further to the right than most of his own extremist party.

Additionally, isn't Paul running as a Repug and not as a Libertarian? (I know he ran as a Libertarian for Pres. back in, like, 1988, but he's been a Repug Congressman for most of the period since then.) It seems to me that as long as he's running in that party he has no shot at all of getting the nomination or getting much attention; and thus even if he gets a slight increase in his typical level of support from disillusioned Indies and Dems it wouldn't be enough to bring any significant amount of attention to issues like the war- especially since all the other Repugs running for Pres. seem to think it's still going hunky-dory. Paul will simply be treated as a shrill oddball by the mainstream media, just as they did to Dennis Kucinich the last time around.

But I could see throwing a few bucks his way, just to keep his message going enough to keep the Repuke debates shaken up. It seems like the media will take his message on the war more seriously than it will take our own guys. I'm more concerned with the message than the person.

Libertarianism is nice in theory, but in reality is no more practicable than communism. It seems to me to be just another pie in the sky ideology that's not grounded in reality. That doesn't mean he doesn't have important things to say.

housewolf: You're exxagerating a wee bit. Paul has made it clear that he wouldn't abolish ALL the things you say...but most of them I don't want abolished at all. And Paul is definently not a corporatist...so that argument doesn't fly with him. But Libertarianism does have a strong "survival of the fittest" POV as you say which is why I don't agree with Paul on social issues and only foreign policy.

That said, help Ron Paul stick around for the Republican debates. He says lots of good things that the Republican base needs to hear.

who got a good laugh are just plain uninformed!!


http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/05/18/martin/index.html?section=cnn_topstories&eref=yahoo
Martin: Paul's 9/11 explanation deserves to be debated

POSTED: 9:26 p.m. EDT, May 18, 2007
By Roland S. Martin
CNN contributor

Roland S. Martin is a CNN contributor and a talk-show host for WVON-AM in Chicago.

(CNN) -- Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani was declared the winner of Tuesday's Republican presidential debate in South Carolina, largely for his smack down of Texas Rep. Ron Paul, who suggested that America's foreign policy contributed to the destruction on September 11, 2001.

Paul, who is more of a libertarian than a Republican, was trying to offer some perspective on the pitfalls of an interventionist policy by the American government in the affairs of the Middle East and other countries.

"Have you ever read about the reasons they attacked us? They attack us because we've been over there. We've been bombing Iraq for 10 years," he said.

That set Giuliani off.

"That's really an extraordinary statement," said Giuliani. "As someone who lived through the attack of September 11, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq; I don't think I've ever heard that before and I've heard some pretty absurd explanations for September 11."

As the crowd applauded wildly, Giuliani demanded that Paul retract his statements.
............

Do you think past U.S. foreign policy was a reason for the 9/11 attacks?

Yes 63% 31550 votes

No 37% 18245 votes
Total: 49795 votes



Loved this line from the article:
"First, Giuliani must be an idiot to not have heard Paul's rationale before. "

that the US policies in the ME are in the tank-------our unquestioned support of Israel, etc etc!