Archive for September, 2007

Congress, Just War and a Young Man’s Choice

Published by
SueM
at September 23, 2007 in Federal Government, Non-Interventionism, Iraq War, Foreign Policy and Ron Paul Awareness. 2 Comments

I have a friend whose son is grappling with the issue of our involvement in Iraq. In his late teens, he knows kids who have either signed up or are thinking about it and right now he supports the war. My friend recently wondered out loud what to say to her son in hopes of broadening his view. With the somewhat obsessive and very fruitful habit I’ve developed over the last several months, I volunteered to look into it. Here’s what I found:

First, a quote from from a speech given by the Hon. Ron Paul of Texas before the U.S. House of Representatives, September 7, 2006 entitled “Big Government Solutions Don’t Work/ The Law of Opposites”

With no consistent moral defense of true liberty, the continued erosion of personal and property rights is inevitable. This careless disregard for liberty, our traditions, and the Constitution have brought us disaster, with a foreign policy of military interventionism supported by the leadership of both parties. Hopefully, some day this will be radically changed.

Unfortunately it seems to be no longer common knowledge that “a foreign policy of military interventionism” is not allowed under the US Constitution. Of the young man or woman volunteering to serve in the US Armed Forces today, I would ask:

Going to war is serious business. Are you willing to do so for a war that has not been authorized by the People through their Representatives in Congress, whose members have taken a solemn oath to uphold the Constitution?

Ron Paul often frames the argument in terms of the just war theory. In his article Onward Christian Soldiers? Christian Perspectives on War, Timothy J. Demy, Th.D. Commander, Chaplain Corps, U.S. Navy lists seven principles or criteria for just war, five for the nation “on the way to war” (jus ad bellum):

Just cause
Just intention
Last resort
Formal declaration
Limited objectives

and two for the military forces “in the midst of war” (jus in bello):

Proportionate means
Noncombatant immunity

Commander Demy then continues:

The just war theory has three important functions. First, it seeks to limit the devastation and outbreak of war. Second, the just war theory offers a common moral framework and language with which to discuss issues of war in the public arena. As Christians and as citizens it gives us a starting point for discussion and cultural engagement. Third, just war theory gives moral guidance to individuals in developing their conscience, responsibilities, and response. When the war drums sound, they are often loud and there is frequently confusion, competition, and chaos rather than clear thinking about the moral and biblical consequences of what is occurring. Just war theory is a tool for responsible Christian living and citizenship

It is reasonable to suppose that when when our founders decided Congress shall have the Power to provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States, and with this the Power to declare War (Art I Sec 8), they had in mind the just war tradition developed over hundreds of years under the influence of not only Christianity but Roman law and Greek philosophy as well.

In these times we have plenty of destructive means at hand with which to wage war. Now more than ever we need the moral compass that limits their use, made plain by the just war tradition handed down through the ages for the good of all mankind.

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Gresham’s Law and the War on Drugs

Published by
SueM
at September 16, 2007 in Drugs and Monetary Policy. 1 Comment

I just finished watching passions run high in three YouTube clips from 1988. Libertarian Presidential candidate Ron Paul and two others were on the Mort Downey Jr. Show and when I say passions ran high, I do mean high, very high. The subject was the War on Drugs, with Ron Paul et al for legalization and almost everyone else, including the host, for keeping illegal drugs illegal.

This happens to be a topic I’ve been trying to get a handle on of late. Maybe I’ve just gotten used to the idea of certain drugs being illegal, maybe I’ve fallen for the propaganda I know is out there, but anyway it is something I haven’t really been able to form an opinion on.

However, I do have an opinion on another fairly hot-button issue and that is the war on Honest Money. So I would like to try to form an opinion on the drug issue by considering the template that defines the money issue.

One very important rule that explains the money thing is Gresham’s Law: Bad money drives out good.

Or, as refined by Dr. Gary North, “…bad money drives out the good money only when the government says the two are equal in value, and enforces this decision with the threat of punishment.” (“Honest Money,” Christian Liberty Press, p. 53)

In other words, the currency artificially overvalued by a government will be spent (circulated) while the artificially undervalued currency will be hoarded (not circulated).

Can this principle be applied to drugs? Bad behavior drives out good.

Or taken a step further, punishing bad behavior drives out good behavior. Making drugs illegal instantly classifies a whole bunch of behaviors as “bad” and this drives out the good behavior that should be a reward in and of itself but no longer is. Now that bad has been defined as using drugs, good comes to mean not using drugs while real goodness continues unnoticed, sort of like honest money being hoarded.

So it seems to me that Gresham’s law does apply here and in dealing with the problem of drug addiction we’ve traded civility, compassion, individual responsibility and self-restraint for crime and punishment. The good has been driven out by the bad. And just as the badness of bad money only gets worse, so too will the badness of bad behavior when it comes to drugs only get worse over time.

On a positive note, just as sound money will mend the economy so will good behavior mend the soul. This process will naturally reassert itself once we effectively tell our governments to stop meddling in our affairs, be they economic transactions or helping one another through the rough spots in life.

Author’s note: For the reader’s interest, a comment on this article, which originally appeared at “TheLawOfIdentity.org Reason, constitutional government, sound money” on September 2nd, 2007, provides a link to a debate on the Gold Standard between Congressman Ron Paul and Charles Partee, member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. The debate was part of the Capitol Hill Gold Conference, held in Washington DC in November 1983 and hosted by the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

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Ron Paul Wants To Eliminate What?

Published by
nonrate
at September 11, 2007 in Federal Government, Environment, Healthcare and Education. 7 Comments

I was on YouTube today and watched a segment of the interview Ron Paul did with George Stephanopoulos on ABC a few months ago. Scrolling through the comments, I read:

You realize Ron Paul will eliminate the dept. of Education, the dept. of transportation, FEMA, and the EPA. He voted against a bill trying to defend Network Neutrality. He wants health care solely in the hands of conglomerates! Are you shitting me? Wake the fuck up.

It’s funny because every time a fearful citizen brings up these points, they do so without understanding what they mean.

For example, I’ve heard the concern of losing the Department of Education come up quite a bit. I have to admit, when I first heard about Paul wanting to obliterate it, my ears perked up too –why would Ron Paul want to eliminate education?

No, Ron Paul doesn’t want to eliminate education. When one says “Eliminating the Department of Education,” many hear “Eliminate Education.” This most likely is due to people believing if a federal department exists for a particular societal function, that federal department controls all aspects of it across the country. This is an easy and almost natural assumption for one to take, but the reality is almost always untrue.

In fact, we super-smart Americans have allowed ourselves to be fooled into believing that all executive departments are solely responsible for their respective “named” functions in our society. Not only have we made asses out of ourselves for assuming as much, it goes against the American ideal to have such a centralized entity in the first place.

One problem is, most people don’t know what the federal departments’ do, are responsible for, or what their main objectives are. To shed some light on this, let’s explore the Department of Education.

The Department of Education, or it’s equivalent, was first enacted in 1867. It didn’t last very long – one year later, it had the misfortune of being downgraded to an office. That is until 1979, when Jimmy Carter broke the department level functions off of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare. Between 1868 and 1979, there was no department dedicated to education.

For those who find the elimination of this department preposterous today, Ronald Reagan himself promised to find a way to eliminate this department during his presidency. He did it with the support of the Republican Party, and its pundits. He did try, but failed to do so. In fact, in 1979, at the onset of the act to create this department, the Democratic party opposed it while the Republicans supported it. And yet, the same Republican Party believes it’s necessary today. A lot can flip-flop in twenty five years.

So what does the department actually do? I couldn’t find anything all too compelling, at least, nothing the states can’t or haven’t been doing on their own. Because education is almost exclusively managed at the state level, all this department’s main function is is to “formulate federal funding programs involving education and to enforce federal educational laws regarding privacy and civil rights.” It exists to play the role of policing the states’ own education police and to distribute taxpayer money that the states would do themselves if the additional funds weren’t diverted to the federal government for that purpose to begin with.

In other words, nothing we can’t live without.

Have they been doing a good job? In my opinion, absolutely not. Ask those around you if they believe public education in America today is better than it was before 1990. How about before 1980? In my experience, most agree the quality of education has diminished significantly in the last twenty seven years. So it would seem the Department of Education’s existence coincides with the decline of American public educational quality. And yet for many of the years before it existed on its own, educational quality seemed better.

So when others look at Ron Paul as some nutcase because he wants to eliminate departments and government functions that “sound” like they do something important, those individuals would benefit from actually understanding what it is the department does, before making such judgements. As in the example with the Department of Education, you can easily break down this logic for most or possibly all of these department’s. For example, consider some other areas people express fear or laugh at when Ron Paul discusses their elimination:

The IRS

Anyone who claims to understand what the IRS does and why it’s required for the good of the nation is a liar. Ask them if they have memorized the code of the IRS. When they say no, ask them to do so –they can’t. In fact, the odds of being able to do so are cosmic in scale. Then you’d have the challenge of understanding them. We had no IRS before 1913, and Ron Paul is not suggesting to eliminate revenue generation for the Federal government. He’s advocating not taxing individual income to get it. Period.

FEMA

They spoke for themselves during Hurricane Katrina, did they not? Citizens are responsible for helping citizens in the event of a disaster, at least in my opinion. Citizens can centralize a solution for this in private industry. Its being in government control has been a disaster. The concept of having an organized and funded group to assist in disaster recovery isn’t a bad one at all. In fact, it’s rather helpful to a functional society. But FEMA’s role is not centralized exclusively for this purpose as most would believe. And we’ve all seen how it’s been managed. I’d prefer to see a private industry take the reins on this one.

The Environmental Protection Agency

Having environmental regulations and laws for private industry to follow is one thing. Having a department act as a policing force for them is another. We don’t need it – removing the EPA doesn’t mean industry will be able to dump chemicals anywhere they want. We already have laws against harming individuals by contaminating the environment, so if you think eliminating the EPA eliminates the laws protecting the environment, stop being scared of that, it doesn’t.

Net Neutrality

Ron Paul most likely fears having the government micro-manage competition will stagnate growth on the internet, and simply doesn’t want government in control of maintaining neutrality. Think about it, if more competition were allowed in communications, the minute this happened a new company would be able to materialize without the unnecessary resistance or costs that exist today, to offer a better service, and people would have a choice to move to it. Simple. The problems with Net Neutrality are problems with other existing laws and not enough competition, and Ron Paul as president would help eliminate that restrictive red-tape.

Health Care

Although I agree that a socialized health care system is not in the interest of the federal government, I do agree health care has become a crisis of sorts for us. Unfortunately, much of this crisis is caused by poor judgment many Americans make concerning their own health and well being. Regardless, I would like to see a working solution myself. But as one would look at a resume and check references when hiring a new employee, I cannot in good faith hire the federal government to perform this function. Even though Ron Paul is against socialized health care, I have heard him state several times he also believes health care, at least for the elderly, is a necessity and is something he would work to promote a federal solution for. I will say this, I’d prefer to put a trillion dollars into my fellow citizens’ health care than bombs and ammunition to kill Iraqis.

Bottom line, if someone wishes to debate a Ron Paul over elimination of a Department based on its label, without knowing what it does, how it works, or how it contributes to the citizen… they do so foolishly. And from this point forward, you’ll be able to understand how much of a fool they appear. It’s like debating how my dad can cut metal with his teeth because he looks bigger than your dad. I know, it’s disturbing, but we live amongst a large group of adult kindergarteners who have the right to vote. I, for one, find that preposterous.

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Why “Ron Paul Can’t Win” Won’t Last

Published by
peter
at September 11, 2007 in Gen Y, Iraq War, Primaries, Foreign Policy and Political Issues. 13 Comments

A few months ago I reconnected with an old friend with whom I haven’t spoken in close to 12 years. He happens to be my former boss and a Reagan Republican. In the spring of 1995 he offered me my first sales job while I was abroad, during a year off I took between high school and college. At the time, he was the publisher of several English language business papers in central and eastern Europe.

I was pleased to find out that while we had been out of touch he had become a publisher of a prominent conservative publication in Washington. Since then he has left the publishing business and is once again abroad. He sounded disgusted with the current state of the Republican party.

A few days ago I asked him what his conservative friends in the US think of Ron Paul. His response was “they think he is simply unelectable due to lack of mass name recognition.”

This, of course, did not surprise me.

As a Ron Paul supporter I am used to hearing the “Ron Paul can’t win” objection. Despite the fact that he is finally getting decent coverage in the mainstream press, even positive pieces about him throw in a caveat; they usually say something along the lines of “he is an interesting, nice guy with some great ideas BUT….” Usually this “but” is followed by a phrase along the lines of “he doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell.”

This widespread dismissal has been driving many Ron Paul supporters nuts because it creates a self-fulling prophecy. If everyone thinks that everyone else thinks that he can’t win, well then he won’t. And no one wants to throw their vote away, right?

Some of us suspect a conspiracy by the media and the corporatocracy that controls it. I don’t fall into that camp–in my view everyone in the media who dismisses him simply doesn’t believe he can win because nobody else seems to–just like everyone else. This feeds on itself because no one is willing to go out on a limb and possibly risk their career to say “wait a minute, I think that Ron Paul doesn’t just have some good ideas, I think he has a chance.” It always takes a leap of faith to change the status quo.

But there is good news. Lately I’ve come to realize that this objection won’t be valid much longer as more and more people realize that he does in fact have a chance. “Ron Paul is unelectable” was a valid concern several months ago when he was completely on the margins, but since then his campaign has raised a healthy sum of money and is winning more straw polls than any candidate except Romney. Things are changing–perhaps slowly for now, but Ron Paul’s campaign will reach a Tipping Point soon. This “tip” will occur in the next few months and when it does it will catch nearly everyone by surprise.

There are three factors which will enable this to happen:

1. The Gen Y vote

A full half of Generation Y (born 1980-2000) will be of voting age by next year and no one really knows what impact they will have on the 2008 elections. A few months ago, Fortune ran a cover story about how different twentysomethings behave in the workplace, but the political aspect of this story has not been covered to any significant degree. One thing is certain–in 2004 the Gen Yers who were of voting age showed up to the polls in droves. And now that their numbers have doubled and they are a little older and wiser, they are poised to shake things up.

Contrast this with the the fact that my own generation (Gen X) has a well-deserved reputation for being politically apathetic, and this will only make this next generation’s impact even greater and more surprising. They are very different from the rest of us and will wield close 40 million potential votes in 2008. Given how connected they are to each other online (specifically Facebook), they are more than capable of politically mobilizing themselves in unprecedented ways. Combine that with the fact that they don’t like the way we’ve run things and we might be looking at nothing less than a revolution.

2. Campaign Fundraising

Dollars speak louder than words, and the Ron Paul Campaign raised 5 million of them in Q3! He has the cash to be in this for the long haul and is likely to “tip” very soon.

3. Iraq

There is not a single other Republican Presidential candidate, and only two other Democratic ones (Bill Richardson and Dennis Kucinich), who are talking about an immediate exit strategy from Iraq. Ron Paul is correct about his party; Republicans have lost heir way. These former non-interventionists are ready to return to their roots. If Dr. Paul can leverage this argument to win over enough of them who are tired of where the current administration has led them, he will take the primaries.

As far as the general elections go, nearly half of Americans think we should get out altogether. If Ron Paul is lucky enough to run against Hillary Clinton, it’ll be a landslide.

So why aren’t the other candidates listening to the people? The Iraq “war” was an unconstitutional and illegal invasion and we accomplished our stated objective years ago. Why are we still there? Why have we allowed thousands of our troops to pay for our honor (thanks Mike Huckabee) with their blood? Is that what they mean by supporting the troops? I’d rather support them by getting them home.

It’s hard for me to understand why it isn’t obvious to everyone that Iraq really is the key issue for 2008. Why don’t the other candidates get this yet? Before I get too worked up about this I must remind myself that this is actually good for Ron Paul. Tom Eddlem, a fellow Boston MeetUp member, summed it up to me this way:

The war in Iraq is already unpopular, as evidenced by the mid-term elections last year. It’s going to sink the Republican Party by November of next year, unless the Republicans nominate Ron Paul. Ron Paul is the only Republican who was right on Iraq from the beginning. Recent polling numbers indicate that even a majority of Republicans recognize that the United States needs to leave Iraq within six months, and no other Republican candidate is for a pull-out.

So let’s not worry too much about this “Ron Paul Can’t Win” thing. The question that people will soon be asking is not “why should I vote for Ron Paul if he doesn’t stand a chance of winning?” but rather “why would I want to waste my vote on those other Republicans who are guaranteed to lose in November?”

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Government-Confiscated Education

Published by
SueM
at September 10, 2007 in Education. 3 Comments

Corie made a very important point in her recent article It’s History, Not Legend when she noted that “James Madison, and all of the great individuals who aided in the founding of America were educated.” It seems the topic of education reform is forever on the table.

Ron Paul advocates a step in the right direction by promising to shut down the Federal Department of Education. It wasn’t all that many years ago that we had the understanding that education is a local matter. Even then, however, education was not in reality local because so-called compulsory attendance laws had started showing up in the middle of the 19th century, making education a state matter. That was the beginning of the end we now suffer and so Ron Paul’s step is really only a first step.

That said, I would like to share the following letter I wrote to the editor which originally appeared in the MetroWest Daily News (Framingham, MA) on Sunday, January 7, 2007:

Government-Confiscated Education

With reference to “Raising the bar, raising confusion, with MCAS” (Gary Dzen, MetroWest Daily News, December 25, 2006), you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. You can make a child go to school, but you can’t make him learn.

Enter the MCAS.

Designed to “raise the bar” by making children learn, it is actually revealing the folly of government-instituted education systems. It is not surprising that these are prohibited by law.

It is a requirement of our law that our Legislatures and Magistrates encourage the interests of Literature and the Sciences. The officers of our government cannot compel interest but can only encourage it by encouraging the interests that naturally arise as a result of our corporate lives. Yet since 1853 children have been compelled to learn what someone in an increasingly distant office thinks they should learn, not what their parents think they should learn, or what they themselves are interested in, but what a stranger thinks is good for them.

Enter the MCAS.

Children and those who care for them are no longer people. The system got rid of parents in the mid-1800’s and now it is getting rid of the teachers. Here is what this is about: Government confiscates education and the money it needs to build a system “for the people.” Putting aside that we never authorized government to define education, when it can’t deliver on the promises made it proceeds to confiscate even more funds to save the sinking ship.

Why not take children out? There are practical reasons of course, but also this: believing there is a law that requires you to send your children to school, you think that if you don’t send them you will have to submit to government authority on the matter. Better to send them than to have to realize that you are not free to educate your own children. It may be of interest to some that there have been at least two cases in the Commonwealth in recent years where parents who questioned the authority of government agents over the education of their children have won in court.

Our towns (that’s us) have failed to resist government intrusion into our affairs. What was repugnant to our law in 1853 is still repugnant today.

Enter the MCAS, tip of the iceberg.

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A Soldier’s Neo-Con Free Perspective on Iraq

Published by
CorieW
at September 9, 2007 in Iraq War, Primaries, Foreign Policy, Political Issues and Ron Paul Awareness. 6 Comments

An old friend of mine who is currently stationed in Iraq sent me an instant message tonight to catch up and chat. I was quite surprised, pleasantly so, of course, because I haven’t spoken to him in ages. We talked about this that and the other thing, and not knowing at all where he would stand on the issue, I asked him how he thought things were going over there. I was honestly entirely unsure of what his response would be, because I primarily remember his “let’s get ‘em!” attitude prior to basic training back in high school. What he did end up saying though, was both justifying to me but rather upsetting at the same time - the prototypical catch-22.

To start, he laughed, then cursed the place out. His next statement reminded me of something that Rudy Giuliani, who has never been to Iraq, would call “extraordinary” or “unbelievable”: “The only reason why things seem to be going well is because we pay the bad guys not to fight us anymore”. I responded with a sarcastic comment about how bribery is always fantastic and he added to his initial comment by saying, “The same guys that were attacking us and blowing us up everyday work for us now as ‘Iraqi Police’ - which is fine to me, as long as it lasts until after October when I come home, haha.” I in response of course commented on the whole scenario as being a bad idea in the long-term. He then explained the situation further in saying, “These people are horrible. We shouldn’t be here, cause we’re fighting Al Qaeda and this other terrorist group. Then the two groups started fighting, and then once the other started winning we ‘allied’ with them …. ”

 ….. Then came the statement that was extremely upsetting to me: “It’s real nice working with people who you know have killed your friends and blown you up and shot at you. I hate them all. I just want to go home.” As I manifested feelings of sympathy, sadness, then anger, remembering how passionate this friend of mine was about fighting for his country, honor and all those ideals entailed before being sent to Iraq, I realized then and there how infinitely and personally offended I was by comments made by the neo-conservatives in the September 5th debate. I became especially aware of my disgust in relation to Mike Huckabee’s statements about honor in his exchange with Ron Paul.

Huckabee, as well as the other neo-conservatives, are presidential candidates running on OTHER people’s sacrificed honor, not on the symbolic honor of the Republican party, and certainly not on an honor they personally possess. The neo-conservative candidates are basing their platforms on their individual egos and an inability to admit that they were, first off, acting illegally, and secondly were wrong. These men say that it’s about “finishing what we started” and about “honor”, but I invite someone to please explain to me where the honor lies in forcing American troops to fight side by side with terrorists disguised as mercenaries further disguised as allies who have killed the dearest friends of our brave soldiers?

Another interesting point my friend made was about the differences between Iraq and Afghanistan. We were discussing another friend of ours who was recently sent to Afghanistan. I said that I assumed based on what I know that it must not be as bad there as it is in Iraq. He responded by saying that Afghanistan is supposed to be a lot better. “The people hate us here (in Iraq) but are semi-indifferent over there.” Interesting point - perhaps because the presence of troops in Afghanistan actually relate to September 11th whereas in Iraq, nothing positive is being achieved.

In a country where the police are simply a terrorist group themselves, and we have been reduced to aiding them as our only legitimate course of action so that things “look good”, we have no business there. It seems to me that everything occuring in Iraq is merely a temporary “fix” to an endless problem. It’s just the U.S. government supporting another terrorist group disguised as an ally. What will be next? There is no long-term solution that the U.S. can possibly provide. Whenever our government provides a political group or country with weapons (Iran-Contra Affair), or aids them in the overthrow of elected leaders (1953 Coup D’Etat in Iran), nothing good comes of it. The only result is what the CIA calls BLOWBACK - a concept apparently foreign to the neo-conservatives although the term simply means that there are consequences to our actions; consequences ranging from deep-seated hatred of the United States of America by countries we intervened in to actual aggression from groups using such actions as components of the reason they attacked.

I know that I can keep dreaming, but I’d like to see even the smallest bit of accountability on the part of the neo-conservatives who pretend so fervently that they are Republicans. As Ron Paul points out quite often, Reagan, a man the party idolizes, was smart enough to recognize the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics, and pulled out of Lebanon. No incoherent, backward ramblings where a perverse version of honor is used to justify an obvious mistake - he just did what needed to be done. The neo-conservatives could learn from their supposed idol. They’d also probably better themselves if they took a couple of history classes; especially on foreign policy.

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It’s History, Not Legend

Published by
CorieW
at September 7, 2007 in Primaries, Political Issues and Ron Paul Awareness. 3 Comments

As I was walking home down Hanover Street last night, I cut through the park area near the Old North Church and took a look at the statue of a man we Americans memorialize, perpetually put on a pedestal, but apparently disregard. Are we truly that removed from the message of freedom our Founding Fathers gave their sweat, blood and tears to intergrate into the fabric of our society? Paul Revere’s statue portrays him as heroic - almost mythical - and maybe that in and of itself is the problem.

At what point does history become legend? What length of time must pass for a human mind to simply disregard the mistakes of our forebearers and inevitably repeat them? I fail to understand those who are so quick to ignore the truths that history teaches us - especially the politicians who do it. James Madison, the man posterity has named the Father of our Constitution warned us that “if tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”

Profound, and quite relevant to the contemporary American, no? It’s almost as though Mr. Madison was an oracle. Though a genius, he was not omniscient. The mystery of what he in fact was lies in an all too obvious explanation: James Madison, and all of the great individuals who aided in the founding of America were educated. These men knew their history and understood the complexities of human interaction, two things that apparently, the neo-conservative candidates running for the highest office of what we currently call America either disregard or simply do not understand.

Being present at the Republican debate Wednesday night was truly disheartening to say the absolute least. As a traditional conservative and advocate of limited government, I was sick to my stomach as a reaction to almost every response the candidates (besides Ron Paul, obviously) provided. I was especially displeased with Mitt Romney, who of course, FOX gave the most time to. I had to manifest a great deal of composure to react quietly when Mr. Romney told an enthusiastic, but seemingly ignorant audience that our government has no call to protect civil liberties when it cannot protect life (therefore justifying the Patriot Act among an array of other unconstitutional activities).

The telling James Madison quotation resounded repeatedly in my head as I fully recognized that I was witness to an exact manifestation of his prediciton, as so many before me have seen the roots of tyranny take hold in their lives. Oppression does not bequeath itself upon a society overnight, but rather the gradual erosion of civil liberties strip us of our freedoms of choice and conscience, because we have never met directly with intolerable tyranny in our lifetimes. We must depart from this narrow view of our existences and gather years of history and precedent together to formulate a viable theory of what our futures will in fact come to if “checks and balances” continue to operate within our government as more of a symbol than a legitimate method.

As it stands, both the Republicans and the Democrats as entire parties want the government to have control over more and more aspects of our lives. Whether it’s Romney giving the government the go ahead to do anything in order to “protect life” or Hillary convincing her constituents that it is the duty of our American government to intervene in everything from healthcare to genocide in third world countries despite the inherent inefficiencies of bureaucracy and the fact that government intervention will inevitably worsen the situations.

If principle cannot beat out Establishment in this election, I will be sorely disappointed in the ability of the American people to understand and utilize what voice we are given, but I won’t give up. I’m out on the streets spreading the word about the Ron Paul Revolution because the optimist in me believes that true civic-minded Americans will grasp the importance of the good doctor’s principled message. We mustn’t limit ourselves to our own constricted views of life as we see it in front of us. It’s an age-old cliche, but history repeats itself.

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Fox News Exposes Itself … Again

Published by
SueM
at September 6, 2007 in Primaries, Political Issues and Ron Paul Awareness. 1 Comment

Exhibit A:

Alan Colmes is announcing results of the Text Message “U-Vote” for the first time and Ron Paul is first with 35%.

Sean Hannity says:

Oh, here we go again … ah, here we go again, it’s driving me crazy

Later in the broadcast:

Alan Colmes:

And before we get to our next guest, let’s take a look at the results so far for tonight’s ‘U-Vote.’ In first place with 33% … Ron Paul … the Paulites I guess busy dialing and re-dialing on the phone.

Sean Hannity (interrupting):

Wait wait wait wait … you know what, they’re re-dialing by the second …

Exhibit B:

Political pollster Frank Luntz is analyzing the graph of viewer response during the “Paul - Huckabee” exchange on Iraq. As it turns out, the exchange was cut short.

Viewer response increases with these last words of Mike Huckabee’s:

Even if we lose elections we should not lose our honor and this is more important than the Republican Party.

to which Pollster Luntz gives his final comment:

Not losing our honor … clearly principle won out in this exchange.

(end of segment)

All well and good had the complete exchange actually been reported, with these, Ron Paul’s final words:

We’ve lost over 5,000 Americans over there in Afghanistan, in Iraq plus thecivilians killed. How many more do you want to lose? How long are we going to be there? What do we have to pay to save face? That’s all we’re doing is saving face. It’s time we came home.

We’ll never know what viewer response to the true ending of this exchange showed on the graph. I can say that the applause to the two statements seemed to be quite even. Given this I think it is safe to imagine Pollster Luntz’ actual final words, the ones not broadcast by Fox News:

It’s time we came home … clearly principle won out in this exchange.

Further Reading:

Hannity Lies To Discredit Ron Paul After Debate

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Have We Lost Our Minds?

Published by
peter
at September 6, 2007 in Primaries, Foreign Policy and Ron Paul Awareness. 4 Comments

Did anyone notice Rudy Giuliani smirking during last night’s debate? The first time I noticed it was when Ron Paul responded to Chris Wallace’s patronizing question about whether we should be taking our marching orders from Al Qaeda. Ron Paul’s response:

We should take our marching orders from our Constitution…we should not go to war without a declaration, we should not go to war when it’s an aggressive war. This is an aggressive invasion, we’ve committed the invasion of this war, and it’s illegal under international law.

In my experience, smirking is something people do when they feel threatened (when reason fails, try condescension!). So is chuckling in this case, and Giuliani wasn’t the only one chuckling while Chris Wallace asked his question. It sounded like some of the other moderators were too.

It astounds me that someone running for the highest office in the land would chuckle and smirk while debating such a serious issue. Ron Paul’s response, despite it’s perhaps overzealous delivery, was constructed with reason. His argument during the famous blowback exchange with Giuliani was also constructed with reason. Giuliani’s response then?

That’s an extraordinary statement, as someone who lived through the attack of September 11th, that we invited the attack because we were attacking Iraq.

Wait, that’s extraordinary? Either this man does not believe that our actions have consequences or he is purposely deceiving us. I am not sure which is worse, but it doesn’t really matter.

The problem with this exchange is that Giuliani’s argument is predicated on a fallacious belief about human nature. Psychology tells us that terrorists act out of reasons that seem rational to them, not out of evil (whatever that is). Blaming the 9/11 attacks on sociopaths or radical Islam or people who “hate our freedoms” goes against everything we know about human nature.

In general, people want peace. But when they grow up in an environment without hope, surrounded by poverty, when they witness extreme violence as children, and when they are recruited for a terrorist cause before they are emotionally developed enough to know any better, they feel justified in their actions when they pursue terrorist tactics. Can you really know what you would do in their shoes, in the complete absence of hope and in an atmosphere of continual injustice and powerlessness? Can you say with 100% certainty that you wouldn’t be mad as hell and want to do something about it? And could you blame the slightly more reasonable people around you who tolerate or even encourage your behavior because there are no other options?

I highly recommend this quick read about The Psychology of Terrorism.

We should not need psychology to tell us these things. I think most reasonable, emotionally mature people could empathize with the desperation these people feel if they opened themselves up to the experience. How could you not feel sad for a 10 year old boy who is forced to watch his mother get raped before being brutally murdered? And when he grows up to passionately hate whoever he blames for this injustice, even if this hatred is misdirected, can you really call him evil?

But let’s get back to the real issue at hand. What Ron Paul is saying is that our foreign policy was responsible for the conditions which breed terrorism. In this case it’s because we had troops stationed in Islam’s holiest land while we bombed Iraq between the Gulf Wars, killing innocent civilians in the process. In fact, since WWII we have toppled countless democratically elected governments just when their countries needed them most and usually replaced them with bloodthirsty despots who promised to be friendly to our business interests (at the expense of the people). Saddam Hussein comes to mind–it’s ironic that we invaded Iraq to liberate the very people we once enabled him to oppress.

Skeptical? Our own government has admitted to it in some cases, such as the coup d’état we staged in Iran in 1953 to overthrow Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh after he tried to nationalize the oil industry. We did the same thing the following year in Guatemala when we overthrew democratically elected President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán. We continued these type of policies into the 1960s, the 70s, the 80s and 90s (and this list omits our involvement in Africa plus a few assassinations that the CIA was most likely involved in). There was blowback then (1979 hostage crisis) and there is blowback now (9/11). We reap what we sow, and blowback is a bitch.

Jon Stewart recently summed up our foreign policy record in the Middle East in what was supposed to be a defense of Barack Obama’s lack of experience, but which sounded more like an endorsement of Ron Paul. This is a must see (and quite funny too).

Bottom line: we can’t allow Giuliani-style thinking to win. Our foreign policy is broken, it’s usually unconstitutional, and if we don’t change it soon we’re going to be in big trouble. Don’t listen to the fear-mongering politicians who needlessly put our troops in harm’s way while quietly taking away your liberties. Don’t let them tell you that the situation is more complicated than you realize and that thinking you can just pull out of Iraq is naive. It’s not. Sure, getting out of Iraq will be messy, but it’s better than the alternative and in the long run our grand-children will thank us.

I hope you’ll forgive me for the cliché, but we owe it to them.

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A Perversion of Patriotism

Published by
CorieW
at September 1, 2007 in Foreign Policy, Political Issues and Ron Paul Awareness. 6 Comments

I recently read an article about the Ron Paul Revolution that was printed in the Boston Globe. As a Ron Paul supporter, I’d say that overall it’s not particularly bad (any exposure raises awareness), but of course feel it doesn’t do him justice. My obvious bias aside, I find it interesting that the article states, in reference to the June 5th GOP debate, that Giuliani won “patriotic points” by telling Ron Paul (and in effect the CIA as well as the 9/11 Commission Report) he was wrong. Though I am not doubting Giuliani’s good intentions in the general (and apparently uneducated) sense, I believe that Cathy Young (writer of the referenced article) and the average American have a perverted idea of what patriotism in fact is because of how it has been branded (take for example, none other but the infamous Patriot Act). As Ron Paul so eloquently puts it, “The original American patriots were those individuals brave enough to resist with force the oppressive power of King George. I accept the definition of patriotism as that effort to resist oppressive state power.”

Although this article portrays Dr. Paul in a generally favorable light, it gets me down a bit - starts making me feel like I’m somewhat of a dreamer, lost in the legacy of the founding fathers and out of touch with the reality of, as Ms. Young puts it, the “age of bipartisan Nanny Statisim.” But I refuse to believe that a principled, pro-liberty message of small government and Constitutional ideals is outdated. It is timeless, and furthermore, it is correct. Myself, like so many other Ron Paul supporters I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with, cannot identify as a either a neo-conservative Republican or seemingly socialist Democrat, because both parties seem, as a whole, so painfully out of touch with what they are supposed to be upholding as American political entities: liberty, the rule of law under our Constitution, and TRUE American ideals of freedom, not government control as a means to acquire and “spread democracy.” If we are not bestowed with the miracle of Ron Paul becoming our next President, I truly worry about the path this country is headed down. The optimist in me does have faith in the character of the American people, and sometimes I think, maybe, just maybe when it gets really bad, the majority of us will wake up. But my fear is that it is going to have to get that bad for a wake up call to arm the American people against tyranny (metaphorically of course, as the Second Amendment will likely have been repealed by then *knock on wood*). George Washington warned us to “guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.” I hope that as a people, we have the ability to do that. It may take longer than an impatient young optimist like myself can even conceive of, but I do have faith in what our Founding Fathers gave us. Individuals like Ron Paul help to justify that said faith. The reality of his grassroots support is highly motivating as well. Even if Ron Paul doesn’t win in 2008, at least I know that there are thousands, if not millions of Americans who refuse to go down without a fight. And this is not by any means the last battle.

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