Wartime rationing also left a mark. When he saw a local butcher shop ignoring the rules on Saturdays and selling “all the meat you wanted, at a price,” Mr. Paul wrote, it was “my first real-life experience in the free market solving problems generated by government mischief.”The problem of course being "how can we make it so poor people starve faster".
Wartime rationing also left a mark. When he saw a local butcher shop ignoring the rules on Saturdays and selling “all the meat you wanted, at a price,” Mr. Paul wrote, it was “my first real-life experience in the free market solving problems generated by government mischief.”Rationing was mischief?
Wartime rationing also left a mark. When he saw a local butcher shop ignoring the rules on Saturdays and selling “all the meat you wanted, at a price,” Mr. Paul wrote, it was “my first real-life experience in the free market solving problems generated by government mischief.”
There's no such thing as too much federal government.Which is why everyone in the former soviet countries all loved their governments and thought they were awesome.
Wow. It's really incredible how obvious some people's plan for holding on to power is ("keep 'em stupid"). What's even more incredible is the percentage of people who claim to be the only ones who can think (computer nerds, present company excepted, obvs) who enthusiastically endorse that plan.Once again, the department of education does not actually run education in the united states, it's done, and paid for by state governments. The only thing the Dept Ed. does regarding k-12 is no child left behind, which everyone claims to hate, which is reasonable because it sucks.
United - Federal Government
States - Local Government
of
America - the big land mass where we make it all happen.
The irony is that you seem to be unaware of the last 10 years. You also don't seem to have even a basic understanding of what libertarianism is as a political philosophy.No thanks to internet libertarians, who are invariably idiots. In fact, when I was trying to think up why it is people hate Ron Paul, my guess is that it actually has a lot to do with idiotic internet 'libertarians'/objectivists.
....anti gay, anti black, anti women... Oh wait he didn't know about or write that newsletter, except you know people that support him say he did.Yeah, except he's not officially any of those things, those are all things that you people just feel he must be, even though he says he's not. If Ron Paul actually had a chance at being president, those things would need to be looked at closely. But clearly he doesn't. So why not take the guy at his word?
and he was the nominee for the Libertarian Party in '88, so it may be fair to class him as Libertarian.I'm certainly not trying to argue that he's not a libertarian, someone else said he only leans libertarian, but obviously calling him a libertarian is fine.
I don't loath Ron Paul. I think his policy positions are pretty nutso in a way that I would probably regard as charming-- That's our Ron Paul, resident congressional loony!-- if his vocal internet supporters were less obnoxious. Which I realize isn't fair to Paul, but it's likeWell I haven't really seen any here. On the other hand, reddit is very pro Ron Paul, to the point where you don't see a lot of back and forth either.
Does "his word" include the newsletter he published with his name on it? And photos of him shaking hands with people?Oh my god a politician Shook Someone's hand!?!?!?!?! In the presence of Camera!?!?!? HOLY SHIT!!!!
He's defended those statements in the past. Should I not take him at his word in those cases?You obviously don't need to take him at his word if you don't want to. But it's a bit like neo-cons who say we should "take Iran at their word" that they are all insane apocalyptic religious fanatics who will stop at nothing to nuke Israel as soon as possible, so we must invade. Picking and choosing which statements you want to believe is not the same thing as 'taking them at their word'
The fact that most of his supporters are in fact creepy fat bearded white men (who like to hang banners off of overpasses with the incredibly patronizing position that we don't like him because we just don't UNDERSTAND him) doesn't help to invalidate this caricature.The only supporters of his I've ever seen in real life were college students, but then again I used to live in a college town. They all seemed pretty attractive. I would guess that the median supporter of any politician is a middle aged, overweight white person. Probably a woman in the case of the Democrats, though (note I said median, not mean).
I really don't get it. Paul is anti-women, anti-gay, anti-black.Obviously it's true that Ron Paul is pro-life, but are every other candidate in the republican primary. Pretty much every Republican in the future is going to be pro-life. He's not any less anti-gay then the standard democratic platform, which is opposed to gay marriage. All the 2008 candidates, including Obama were opposed to it, although Obama has said he's open to changing his opinion back to what it was before he started running for national office. He also voted to overturn DADT and voted against the federal marriage amendment, so apparently he's less anti-gay then most republicans. (for example, he was one of 15 to republicans to vote to overturn DADT) So he's significantly less anti-gay then the standard issue republican.
But in the midst of his psychotic ramblings he also manages to spit out the word anti-war and people sieze on it as a sign of his genius.Yeah, here's the other thing: We're actually killing people overseas. Blacks, gay people and women in the U.S are not being killed (except by local governments, of course), believe it or not being more concerned about seeing civilians blown up then gay marriage is a reasonable position to have. Now that Obama is getting us out of Afghanistan and scaling down the military it's less of an issue then it was in 2008. There are still the issues of civil liberties and so on.
That's always been the issue I've had with so many acquaintances who espouse any serious socialist leanings. They almost all seem to assume that they would naturally! be a part of the elite that the masses look-to for guidance and leadership.Yeah, That's not really how socialism works.
delmoi, you're arguing against a strawperson who hates Ron Paul but totally, I dunno, hugs a giant cardboard cutout of Newt Gingrich while making love-eyes at Rick Santorum.I'm arguing against what people are clearly posting in this thread.
Also, why should we take a politician at his word? If we saw Ron Paul drowning kittens and he said "hey, these aren't kittens, they're rocks" you'd be like "I don't understand the hate! The man SAYS he's not doing anything wrong!"I'm not actually saying you should take politicians at their word in general, I guess they all seem pretty dishonest. But Ron Paul isn't going to be president or the republican nominee, so his only real power is to promote ideas. I think a lot of the ideas he's promoting are good ones (ending war and torture, ending the drug war) and some are misguided (ending the fed, the gold standard). The stuff that's "bad" is the completely standard republican position, i.e. against abortion and gay marriage.
That's pretty good.... (in an OMFG WTH sort of way). I bet he has someone from Ventura's advertising staff on board in MN.I don't think it's specific for MN. I have definitely seen it before, and (I assume) well before any significant MN advertising. Maybe a month ago, or something like that?
Last time I checked Ron Paul doesn't label himself a libertarian, but rather as sympathetic to libertarian ideas.Kind of like his stance on racism!
Would you really sell out every minority and marginalized American just so you can legally get high?Ooh, personal attack, classy. I don't want to "legally get high." I want to see an end to shit like this, obviously guns are the 'target', but policies like that result in the arrest of a lot of black people. Do you really need to have it explained to you how the war on drugs is bad for African Americans and Hispanics in this country?
$132 a pop means it was something like 1975, which in turn means that if they had invested in an S&P 500 tracking mutual fund, their fund would currently be worth about $935,000, i.e. over 20% more than their Kruggerands are worth.The stock market has been a terrible investment over the past 10 years. Had they invested in gold in the stock market on Jan 4th, 1975. and switched to gold on December 24th they'd have about $8,230,243.90 (20.72x in the stock market, 6.62x in gold. The price of gold was mostly flat before 2000, while the stock market has been flat since then) Also, simply pointing this out is not actually a defense of Ron Paul either.
I believe there are a handful of states that would be willing to legalize marijuana and marijuana only, although not every medical marijuana state would be able to manage it. Once you start talking about hard drugs you hit the wall of resistance that makes it nearly impossible to fund a needle exchange in this country.Well, the point is, he's a mainstream (or relatively mainstream) politician who is actually pushing in the pro-legalization direction. Yes, only a few states like California or Oregon would legalize marijuana at first, but having done that other states would see that it's not a big deal.
The thing that is especially odd to me about treating states' rights as the answer to the drug war is that his own state of TexasYes, and in Texas they arrest people for having a 0.8 BAC in bars however, that does not mean that alchohol isn't broadly legal in the united states.
Unlike all those idiots who lost money opposing apartheid on principle.
"Prior to the 1890s, the Bill of Rights was held only to apply to the federal government. Under the incorporation doctrine, most provisions of the Bill of Rights now also apply to the state and local governments, by virtue of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution."I'll argue that is his singular overriding belief system, and why we think he's such a danger.
Consider the Lawrence case decided by the Supreme Court in June. The Court determined that Texas had no right to establish its own standards for private sexual conduct, because gay sodomy is somehow protected under the 14th amendment "right to privacy". Ridiculous as sodomy laws may be, there clearly is no right to privacy nor sodomy found anywhere in the Constitution. There are, however, states' rights – rights plainly affirmed in the Ninth and Tenth amendments. Under those amendments, the State of Texas has the right to decide for itself how to regulate social matters like sex, using its own local standards.[145]That's great... "Ridiculous as sodomy laws may be..." SEE!!! He's all for stopping sodomy laws... Ah, but then, he's completely for the right of the States to "decide for themselves 'social matters' ("like sex").
If anything, the Supreme Court should have refused to hear the Kelo case on the grounds that the 5th amendment does not apply to states. If constitutional purists hope to maintain credibility, we must reject the phony incorporation doctrine in all cases — not only when it serves our interests. The issue in the Kelo case is the legality of the eminent domain action under Connecticut law, not federal law. Congress can and should act to prevent the federal government from seizing private property, but the fight against local eminent domain actions must take place at the local level. The people of New London, Connecticut could start by removing from office the local officials who created the problem in the first place.(just google ron paul kelo - I'm not linking to Lew Rockwell).
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posted by txmon at 7:27 AM on February 6, 2012 [23 favorites]