Exclusive: There was buzz on the Internet after libertarian Ron Paul delivered what was billed as his final address in Congress. But his near-hour-long speech sounded more like the ramblings of a right-wing crank than the coherent thoughts of the principled idealist that his fans rave about, writes Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
Rep. Ron Paul, an icon to the libertarian Right and to some on the anti-war Left, gave a farewell address to Congress that expressed his neo-Confederate interpretation of the Constitution and his anti-historical view of the supposedly good old days of laissez-faire capitalism.
In a near-hour-long rambling speechon Nov. 14, Paul also revealed himself to be an opponent of “pure democracy” because government by the people and for the people tends to infringe on the “liberty” of businessmen who, in Paul’s ideal world, should be allowed to do pretty much whatever they want to the less privileged.
Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, answering questions while campaigning in New Hampshire in 2008. (Photo credit: Bbsrock)
In Paul’s version of history, the United States lost its way at the advent of the Progressive Era about a century ago. “The majority of Americans and many government officials agreed that sacrificing some liberty was necessary to carry out what some claimed to be ‘progressive’ ideas,” said the 77-year-old Texas Republican. “Pure democracy became acceptable.”
Before then, everything was working just fine, in Paul’s view. But the reality was anything but wonderful for the vast majority of Americans. A century ago, women were denied the vote by law and many non-white males were denied the vote in practice. Uppity blacks were frequently lynched.
The surviving Native Americans were confined to oppressive reservations at the end of a long process of genocide. Conditions weren’t much better for the white working class. Many factory workers toiled 12-hour days and six-day weeks in very dangerous conditions, and union organizers were targeted for reprisals and sometimes death.
For small businessmen, life was treacherous, too, with the big monopolistic trusts overcharging for key services and with periodic panics on Wall Street rippling out across the country in bank failures, bankruptcies and foreclosures.
Meanwhile, obscenely rich Robber Barons, like John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie and J.P. Morgan, personally controlled much of the nation’s economy and manipulated the political process through bribery. They were the ones who owned the real “liberty.”
It took the Great Depression and its mass suffering to finally convince most Americans “that sacrificing some liberty was necessary,” in Paul’s curious phrasing, for them to gain a living wage, a measure of security and a little respect.
So, under President Franklin Roosevelt, laws were changed to shield working Americans from the worst predations of the super-rich. Labor standards were enacted; unions were protected; regulations were imposed on Wall Street; and the nation’s banks were made more secure to protect the savings of depositors.
Many social injustices also were addressed during Ron Paul’s dreaded last century. Women got the vote and their position in the country gradually improved, as it did for blacks and other minorities with the belated enforcement of the equal rights provisions of the 14th Amendment and passage of civil rights legislation.
The reforms from the Progressive Era, the New Deal and the post-World War II era also contributed to a more equitable distribution of the nation’s wealth, making the United States a richer and stronger country. The reforms, initiated by the federal government, essentially created the Great American Middle Class.
Paul’s Complaint
But in Paul’s view, the reformers should have left things the way they were and he blames the reforms for today’s problems, although how exactly they’re connected is not made clear.
Paul said: “Some complain that my arguments make no sense, since great wealth and the standard of living improved for many Americans over the last 100 years, even with these new policies. But the damage to the market economy, and the currency, has been insidious and steady.
“It took a long time to consume our wealth, destroy the currency and undermine productivity and get our financial obligations to a point of no return. Confidence sometimes lasts longer than deserved. Most of our wealth today depends on debt.
“The wealth that we enjoyed and seemed to be endless, allowed concern for the principle of a free society to be neglected. As long as most people believed the material abundance would last forever, worrying about protecting a competitive productive economy and individual liberty seemed unnecessary.”
But Paul’s blaming “progressive” reforms of the last century for the nation’s current economic mess lacks any logic, more a rhetorical trick than a rational argument, a sophistry that holds that because one thing happened and then some bad things happened, the first thing must have caused the other things.
The reality is much different. Without Theodore Roosevelt’s Progressive Era and Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, the direction of America’s capitalist system was toward disaster, not prosperity. Plus, the only meaningful “liberty” was that of a small number of oligarchs looting the nation’s wealth. (It would make more sense to blame the current debt problem on the overreach of U.S. imperialism, the rush to “free trade,” the unwise relaxing of economic regulations, and massive tax cuts for the rich.)
Besides his reactionary fondness for the Gilded Age, Paul also embraces an anti-historical attitude toward the Founding Era. He claimed that the Constitution failed not only because of the 20th Century’s shift toward “pure democracy” but because of a loss of moral virtue among the populace.
“Our Constitution, which was intended to limit government power and abuse, has failed,” Paul said. “The Founders warned that a free society depends on a virtuous and moral people. The current crisis reflects that their concerns were justified.”
However, there’s no compelling evidence that people were more moral in 1787 or in 1912 than they are today. Indeed, one could argue that many slave-owning Founders were far less moral than Americans are now, a time when tolerance of racial, gender and other differences is much greater.
And as for the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the pious morality of the Robber Barons included the cruel exploitation of their workers, the flaunting of obscene wealth amid widespread poverty, and the routine bribery of politicians. How that measures up to moral superiority is a mystery.
In his speech, Paul declared that “a society that boos or ridicules the Golden Rule is not a moral society,” but many of the Founders and the Robber Barons did not follow the Golden Rule either. They inflicted on others great pain and suffering that they would not want for themselves.
Misreading the Constitution
Paul’s historical incoherence extends to what the Framers were doing with the Constitution. He argues that they were seeking “to limit government” in 1787 when they drafted the Constitution. But that was not their primary intent. The Framers were creating a strong and vibrant central government to replace the weak and ineffective one that existed under the Articles of Confederation.
Of course, by definition, all constitutions set limits on the power of governments. That’s what constitutions do and the U.S. Constitution is no exception. However, if the Framers wanted a weak central government and strong states’ rights, they would not have scrapped the Articles of Confederation, which governed the United States from 1777 to 1787. The Articles made the states “independent” and “sovereign” and left the federal government as a supplicant.
The key point, which Paul and other right-wingers seek to obscure about the Constitution, is that it granted broad powers to the central government along with the mandate to address the nation’s “general Welfare.”
The key Framers of the Constitution, particularly George Washington and James Madison, were pragmatists who understood that a strong and effective central government was necessary to protect the independence of a large and sprawling nation. For that reason, they recognized that the Articles had been a failure, preventing the 13 states from functioning as a cohesive nation. Indeed, the Articles didn’t even recognize the United States as a government, but rather as a “league of friendship.”
General Washington, in particular, hated the Articles because they had left his Continental Army begging individual states for supplies during the Revolutionary War. And after the hard-won independence, Washington saw European powers exploiting the divisions among the states and regions to whittle away that independence.
The whole American enterprise was threatened by the principle of states’ rights because national coordination was made almost impossible. It was that recognition which led Madison, with Washington’s firm support, to seek first to amend the Articles and ultimately to throw them out.
When Madison was trying to get Virginia’s endorsement of an amendment to give the federal government power to regulate commerce, Washington wrote: “the proposition in my opinion is so self evident that I confess I am at a loss to discover wherein lies the weight of the objection to the measure.
“We are either a united people, or we are not. If the former, let us, in all matters of a general concern act as a nation, which have national objects to promote, and a national character to support. If we are not, let us no longer act a farce by pretending it to be.” [For more on this background, see Robert Parry’s America’s Stolen Narrative.]
On to Philadelphia
After Madison was stymied on his commerce proposal in the Virginia legislature, he and Washington turned their attention to a convention that was technically supposed to propose changes to the Articles of Confederation but, in secrecy, chose to dump them entirely.
When the convention convened in Philadelphia in spring 1787, it was significant that on the first day of substantive debate, there was Madison’s idea of the federal government regulating commerce.
As the Constitution took shape and the Convention spelled out the sweeping “enumerated powers” to be granted to Congress Madison’s Commerce Clause was near the top, right after the power to tax, to pay debts, to “provide for the common Defence and general Welfare,” and to borrow money and even above the power to declare war. Yes, the Right’s despised Commerce Clause, which was the legal basis for many reforms of the 20th Century, was among the “enumerated powers” in Article 1, Section 8.
And gone was language from the Articles of Confederation that had declared the states “sovereign” and “independent.” Under the Constitution, federal law was supreme and the laws of the states could be stricken down by the federal courts.
Immediately, the supporters of the old system recognized what had happened. As dissidents from the Pennsylvania delegation wrote: “We dissent because the powers vested in Congress by this constitution, must necessarily annihilate and absorb the legislative, executive, and judicial powers of the several states, and produce from their ruins one consolidated government.”
A movement of Anti-Federalists arose, led by the likes of Patrick Henry, to defeat the Constitution. They organized strong opposition in the states’ ratifying conventions of 1788 but ultimately lost, after winning the concession from Madison to enact of Bill of Rights during the first Congress.
The inclusion of the Tenth Amendment, which reserves for the states and the people powers that the Constitution does not give to the federal government, is the primary hook upon which the modern Right hangs its tri-corner hat of anti-federal ideology.
But the amendment was essentially a sop to the Anti-Federalists with little real meaning because the Constitution had already granted broad powers to the federal government and stripped the states of their earlier dominance.
Remaking Madison
The Right’s “scholars” also make much of a few quotes from Madison’s Federalist Paper No. 45, in which he sought to play down how radical a transformation, from state to federal power, he had engineered in the Constitution. Rather than view this essay in context, the Right seizes on Madison’s rhetorical attempts to deflect the alarmist Anti-Federalist attacks by claiming that some of the Constitution’s federal powers were already in the Articles of Confederation, albeit in a far weaker form.
In Federalist Paper No. 45, entitled “The Alleged Danger From the Powers of the Union to the State Governments Considered,” Madison wrote: “If the new Constitution be examined with accuracy, it will be found that the change which it proposes consists much less in the addition of NEW POWERS to the Union, than in the invigoration of its ORIGINAL POWERS.” Today’s Right also trumpets Madison’s summation, that “the powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.”
But it should be obvious that Madison is finessing his opposition. Whether or not some shadow of these federal powers existed in the Articles of Confederation, they were dramatically enhanced by the Constitution. In No. 45, Madison even plays down his prized Commerce Clause, acknowledging that “The regulation of commerce, it is true, is a new power; but that seems to be an addition which few oppose, and from which no apprehensions are entertained.”
However, in Federalist Paper No. 14, Madison made clear how useful the Commerce Clause could be as he envisioned national construction projects.
“[T]he union will be daily facilitated by new improvements,” Madison wrote. “Roads will everywhere be shortened, and kept in better order; accommodations for travelers will be multiplied and meliorated; an interior navigation on our eastern side will be opened throughout, or nearly throughout the whole extent of the Thirteen States.
“The communication between the western and Atlantic districts, and between different parts of each, will be rendered more and more easy by those numerous canals with which the beneficence of nature has intersected our country, and which art finds it so little difficult to connect and complete.”
Founding Pragmatism
The Framers also understood that the country would not remain locked in a late 18th Century world. Though they could not anticipate all the changes that would arise over more than two centuries, they incorporated broad powers in the Constitution so the country through its elected representatives could adapt to those times.
The true genius of the Framers was their pragmatism, both for good and ill, in the cause of protecting American independence and unity. On the for-ill side, many representatives in Philadelphia recognized the evils of slavery but accepted a compromise allowing the states to count African-American slaves as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of representation in Congress.
On the for-good side, the Framers recognized that the American system could not work without a strong central government with the power to enforce national standards, so they created one. They transferred national sovereignty from the 13 “independent” states to “We the people.” And they gave the central government the authority to provide for the “general Welfare.”
Yet, the fight over America’s founding principles didn’t end with the Constitution’s ratification in 1788. Faced with a growing emancipation movement and losing ground to the industrial North the Southern slave states challenged the power of the federal government to impose its laws on the states. President Andrew Jackson fought back against Southern “nullification” of federal law in 1832 and the issue of federal supremacy was fought out in blood during the Civil War from 1861-65.
Even after the Civil War, powerful regional and economic forces resisted the imposition of federal law, whether intended to benefit freed slaves or to regulate industry. In the latter third of the 19th Century, as Jim Crow laws turned blacks into second-class citizens, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie and J.P. Morgan created industrial monopolies that rode roughshod over working-class Americans.
For different reasons, the South’s agrarian oligarchs and the North’s industrial oligarchs wanted the federal government to stay out of their affairs and they largely succeeded by wielding immense political power until the 20th Century.
Then, in the face of widespread abuses, President Theodore Roosevelt went after the “trusts,” President Franklin Roosevelt responded to the Great Depression with the New Deal, and post-World War II presidents and federal courts began the process of overturning racial segregation.
The Right’s Emergence
In reaction to those changes federal regulation of the economy and rejection of overt racial discrimination the modern American Right emerged as a sometimes uneasy coalition between the “free-marketeers” and the neo-Confederates, sharing a mutual hatred of modern liberalism.
Those two groups also drew in other constituencies harboring resentments against liberals, such as the Christian Right angered over Supreme Court prohibitions on compulsory prayers in public schools and abortion rights for women and war hawks, drawn from the ranks of military contractors and neoconservative ideologues.
These right-wing movements recognized the importance of propaganda and thus in the 1970s began investing heavily in an infrastructure of think tanks and ideological media that would develop supportive narratives and disseminate those storylines to the American people.
It was especially important to convince Americans that the New Deal and federal interference in “states’ rights” were a violation of the Founders’ core principles. Thus, the Right could pretend that it was standing up for the U.S. Constitution and the Left was out of step with American “liberty.”
So, right-wing “scholars” transformed the purpose of the Constitutional Convention and recreated James Madison in particular. Under the Right’s revisionist history, the Constitution was drafted to constrain the power of the federal government and to ensure the supremacy of states’ rights. A few Madison quotes were cherry-picked from the Federalist Papers and the significance of the Tenth Amendment was exaggerated.
The success of the pseudo-history can’t be overstated. From the Tea Party, which arose in angry determination to “take back our country” from the first African-American president, to the hip libertarians who turned the quirky Ron Paul into a cult figure, there was a certainty that they were channeling the true vision of the American Founders.
A large segment of the American Left also embraced Ron Paul because his ideology included a rejection of imperial military adventures and a disdain for government intrusion into personal lives (although he is a devout “right-to-lifer” who would deny women the right to have an abortion).
Paul’s mix of libertarianism and anti-imperialism has proven especially attractive to young white men. He is viewed by some as a principled prophet, predicting chaos because the nation has deviated from the supposed path of “liberty.”
However, as his farewell address revealed, his ideology is a jumble of anti-historical claims and emotional appeals. For instance, he posed unserious questions like “Why can’t Americans decide which type of light bulbs they can buy?” apparently oblivious to the need for energy conservation and the threat of global warming.
In the end, Ron Paul comes across as little more than a political crank whose few good ideas are overwhelmed by his neo-Confederate thinking and his sophistry about the inherent value of free-market economics.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
Ok Rothchild author. Millions wrote Paul in, but the MSM hid the 3rd party tally. In 1 Florida city, Paul got about 20% of the volts as a write in on Nov 6th, so you are insulting millions of Americans. Second, forget history,
the tea party started because of taxation without representation. 80% of US thinks Afganistan is a waste of taxmoney, get out now or very soon. If we had a true democracy, maybe we could vote on issues- I’d vote for pull out from Afganistan, repeal tax cut on rich, no debt ceiling increases inc. Except for defense, Paul was more mainstream than Romney, but didn’t have Sheldon Aldeson donating 150 millon to the RNC bankers association ticket.
Robert Parry do you see the potential danger in asserting that Washington and Madison proposed the constitution in order to consolidate power and authority and even more in claiming that subterfuge was employed to achieve this goal? Such a proposal is not consistent with democracy and following the will of the people. Is the “will of the people” just an empty phrase used to create the pretext of democracy?
Were Washington and Madison robber barons manipulating the good will of the people much like those who today hold inordinate power?
Absolutely spot on! Brilliant. Someone – Everyone should have called Paul out for what he really is – an fascist oligarchical supporter. BRAVO! Farewell and good ridden – now if we can rid of his son without having to endure 20 years of more lunatic ramblings.
People get in the habit of writing shrill things they don’t totally believe because of articles full of buts ifs and ands are hard to follow or generate comments that move it up the blogspere.
Robert Parry you got your wish you are go well read here without actually saying anything blatantly false. But does this actually help create the world you want?
A very well written article. He sheds some great light on the world that Ron Paul wants us to go back to. The author could have added a little of the horrible oppression of the gold standard and the absence of a central bank, leaving the private banks to rape the public left and right which lead to the massive populist uprising. He could of also mentioned the frequent panics and depressions that occurred before the evil progressives came along and instituted a financial regulatory system.
Aside from being one of the bigger word salads that I’ve read recently, this author clearly has a grudge against Freedom, Liberty.
I will note to myself that this author is not to be taken seriously, therfore will not be reading anymore of his anti-American rhetoric.
My God, his distorted interpretations are simply pathetic!
I tried to slog thru this biased and historically inaccurate attack against the strawman the author calls “Ron Paul” but the revisionism truelly became unbearable when reading the following:
“They organized strong opposition in the states’ ratifying conventions of 1788 but ultimately lost, after winning the concession from Madison to enact of Bill of Rights during the first Congress”
Many of the States that came together to create the federal government brought up the efficacy of the Constituion being a negative rights document. They were concerned that someone might eventually try to take broad interpretive definitions of the terms “general welfare” and “inter-state commerce”.
Obviously, there would be no reason to waste all the time listing out all the specific eneumerated powers being delegated to the federal government if the term “general welfare” could just be asserted every time the federal government fancied some new power for itself.
The ratifying states didn’t lose anything. They simply helped reassert exactly what they were agreeing to. And it was understood by all that if the federal government ever tried to fabricate new powers for itself the 9th and 10th amendments reasserted once again that those undelegated powers still were reserved by and to the States.
This author spins much in this article historically. Hopefully it helps provoke further discussion and research, especially for the author himself.
This country is in serious trouble if we don’t come to terms with these issues immediatley.
Whoever wrote this article is a backwards thinking geriatric fuddy duddy. Get with the times, wake up and get with the program. This is the new way of thinking for millions of Americans, both Democrat and Republican, and not just the youth. In 2016 you will find Dems and GOP taking on many of Paul’s views. The old ways aren’t working and people are ready for this.
So Ron’s world view doesn’t work for this author? Your assumptions are that Ron doesn’t care about Blacks, the poor, or working people. This is completely removed from the truth. Socialism is abhorrent, it cannot calculate prices, robs people of the incentive to take care of themselves and lowers standards of living for all. Minimum wage laws price unskilled workers out of the market, and inflation via a central bank destroys savers. Ron advocates freed markets and free people, not dictates from authoritarians who presume to know what is best for other individuals, pure democracy is evil. The American republic was not founded as a pure democracy because majority rule is tyranny. But slowly since America’s inception, depots want to rob and steal to promote what they think moral and justified. This is oppression, pure and simple, if 51% of congressman voted for indefinite detention, does that make it the right choice? Absolutely not, liberal busy bodies and conservative war mangers have convinced a once free people that govt is the answer to all their problems, and it has the country virtually bankrupt, morally because of collectivism and financially.
A few points of clarification are in order Mr Dow. Yes it is true that LBJ told the Treasury folks that Vietnam would be a small war and not a big one. That trillion dollar debt was indeed hard money and printed when our currency was backed by gold. The inflation it caused is hard to quantify in terms of today s so called petrodollar. It began with the French government hoarding our tourist monies and then demanding Fort Knox gold in exchange. This scheming let us see if you got it, political embarrassment caused Nixon to create a fiat currency backed by nothing except a nod from the federal reserve board. Their members were a closed, elite clique of Goldman Sachs type shysters and embezzlers. I hate defending LBJ who was a murderer in both his Office and personal affairs, but there it is. Johnson was responsible for signing the voter Rights of 1964 and the Freedom of information Act s. That record sir is a lot better than an Obama signing off on the Patriot and NDA Acts.
It’s breathtaking to witness the imperial U.S. government completely absorb the Left wing. I have lived long enough to see the Left’s total absorbtion by the state. The state itself does not change even one iota. U.S. monetary policy starves people in the third world. It’s the export of inflation. The only way the U.S. can continue printing money, is to export the inflation, via the secret relationship with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
It was Lydon Baines Johnson who crashed the U.S. dollar, with his insane war in Vietnam, and his Great Society buy off of poor voters (mostly black.) The legacy is still visible in our cities, but the dumb Left wing hipsters who get their worldview from Rolling Stone magazine are not aware of this. You are being played you idiots! It’s the monetary system, not the Libertarian movement.
Anyway, just have your war against iran, overthrow the Syrian regime. Make it all safe for The Rothschild’s fractional reserve banks (just like Obama did in Libya.) The 99 year history of the Federal reserve has create dmore slaves than the middle passage ever did. Go back to your MTV now, you feckless American lefties. I’ll never forget.
If Washington and Madison were attempting to pull a coup to overturn the Articles of Confederation then perhaps the narrative that has been passed down to us regarding these particular founding fathers needs revising. If in order to install a strong centralized federal government deception was employed perhaps we need to go back to our original founding document: the Articles of confederation! If signing onto the Constitution amounts to subservience to a tyrannical rule then its adoption was illegitimate, much like a marriage contracted under false pretensions. Further if the Bill of rights was the bargaining chip whereby the federalists were able to collect enough votes then the Bill of Rights was not simply an afterthought but a very important component of the nation’s founding document, namely one which protected the people from federal over-reach. Today the loss of virtue especially amongst our politicians makes the Bill of Rights even more essential for the protection (or regaining) of our God given liberty!
One last point ron Paul is not in favor of Robber Barons ruling the roost. He supports true “free trade” not the phony Ss-called free -trade agreements such as NAFTA which result from corporate government collusiion.
Author of this article is as useful as the idiots Lenin spoke of, so are some of his supporters in the vv comments ^^. Our founding fathers would have pitchforked these authoritarians, romney and obama included.
The jackhole author of this nonsense probably had a hard time deciding which big government piece of filth, Romney or Obama, to vote for.
Along with the Great Depression came the decade of the “Dirty Thirties” – the man made disaster of the Dust Bowl. It took a long time for the independent, flinty, and “keep the government out of my business” farmers to come to the conclusion that they needed to accept not only government aid, but to accept the science, sponsored by the US Government to change the farming practices that contributed to the devestation of the grasslands.
Keep in mind that it was specualtors, suitcase farmers, land robbers (we sent the Indians to the reservations), and banks that contributed to the economic disaster of the Dust Bowl.
The Federal Government had to do 2 things. 1. Help beaten, desparate citizens 2. Correct the man made natural disaster or face the real possibility that the middle of the United States would become the next great Sahara.
It was the role of government intended by the authors of the constitution to do this and protect the whole of the United States. We really need to look back and embrace real history lessons, not the fantasies of self important blowhards like Ron Paul.
Ron Paul’s comments demonstrate his often skewed interpretations and perception(s) of what constitutes public property or for that matter, civics scholarship. Allow me to quote the good doctor; “I believe that property rights should be protected” and “Your right to be on TV is protected by property rights because somebody owns that station. I can’t walk into your station. So right of freedom of speech is protected by property. The right of your church is protected by property.†End quote(s). We now plainly understand that Ron Paul is unaware of confluent forces between corporate entities and society at large. The issues outlined by his own words do not have as much to do with trespass onto corporate property as much as, who owns the airspace and thus the broadcasting radio waves. WE the public control the license and privilege to to so, not corporations or their physical location! Sadly it has come to pass that citizen vigilance as to who gets the license and what material gets broadcast, continually goes unchallenged. Ron Paul’s Pre-Med education may have included a course in civics but he probably chose the pass-fail route. The 1964 Civil Rights Act was and is a cornerstone document, It ensures that all Americans are protected and secure when they vote. Again we’ve been lax to guarantee that the indigent, of color, or other minority consideration or area such as the Mississippi Delta blacks do not suffer voting road blocks. The mere creation of the Act itself exposed prejudices against white as well as black. Let’s not forget Senator Robert Byrd and his Dixiecrat clique making jaded remarks about Appalachian whites (using the n-word) or other derogatory terms like the wiggers. We grew as a nation and in a healthier way, by showing what was just under that skin deep veneer of so called civility. Despite the Act and substantial enforcement efforts, the river delta folks are still, for the most part, left out in the cold.
You know what I found hypocritical about Ron Paul and the libertarian movement? These people have been silent regarding all those GOP governors making it more inconvenient for lower-income people to vote and exercise our most basic Constitutional right. And libertarians were supposedly the people who care so deeply about the Constitution and protecting people’s rights. Why weren’t they siding with the Democrats and speaking out against those ID laws? Apparently, the libertarian definition of “liberty” doesn’t apply to voting rights.
All those Democrats speaking out against voter I.D. laws like the Democrat majority in Rhode Island that passed voter I.D. laws because even two of their own members had been victims of voter identity theft?
Or is it that Democrats in Rhode Island all just hate the poor and want to inconvenience their voting?
Which is it?
WHERE IS THE SUBSTANCE IN YOUR ARGUMENTS AGAINST DR. PAUL?? Still waiting… you want to talk about getting fooled? I’d bet you arrogant clowns just LOVE the Imperial Hilary Clinton… enough said.
All the RWNJs have their panties in a twist, which justs proves that it is MUCH easier to fool someone then to make them realize that they have been fooled.
C’mon kids, let’s try and graduate from college before you label Paul supporters as “Right Wing Nutjobs”. For example, I voted for John Kerry in 2004 being adamantly against Bush (for much the same reasons that I now fervently support Dr. Paul). In 2008 I wrote in Ron Paul in the Ohio general election because I saw through the status-quo establishment lies of McCain and Obama. This past election I wrote in Dr. Paul in Ohio again but saw Obama as the lesser of two evils. I was successful at getting several of my family and friends to not vote for Romney (they wrote in Ron Paul or voted for Obama instead). I have a degree in political science and I’m a child of Italian immigrants… I vote with my heart as a conscientious human being with peace and prosperity for the world in mind. Let’s stop the severely ignorant party-cheerleading… the 1% control both the R and D parties. THINK FOR YOURSELF!!!
One doesn’t have to subscribe to Rep. Paul’s entire agenda and worldview, bit still see some reason to think he could have been a beneficial president:
To put it bluntly, a year after the inauguration of a President Ron Paul, no matter his beliefs, we would still have had the SEC (such as it is), Social Security and Medicare in recognizable form (they’re under threat anyway), and we would not have re-legalized racially segregated public accommodations.
On the other hand, there’s a real possibility we would have ended the wars and assassination programs, and been on the road to pulling the troops, goons, and spooks out of the dozens of countries where they operate today. In addition, he could have driven a stake through the heart of the war on drugs by rescheduling marijuana and other substances to make them legal, or less strictly prohibited, and ordered the drug-troops in the military, FBI, DEA, etc. ad nauseam, to stand down.
Robert,
Great article. After reading the comments it is obvious you threatened a few people’s fantasy world view.
The problem with republican and libertarian world views is that they never want their views carried to the logical end-points as you have done here. I used to describe it as helping someone push their little shopping cart of logic until it falls over the cliff.
I can’t take credit for this thought but I saw someone post that the only way libertarianism will work is to remove all laws so we can at least address our grievances with the wealthy by force. Other than that it is just a childish fantasy world where “no rules” is better. Guess a few people need to go back and read “Peter and Wendy” or “Lord of the Flies”.
You are fools if you include Ron Paul with the neocons who destroy civil liberties and the Constitution in favor of military adventurism and governing your private lives. He is the Peoples’ ally… what kind of man advocates for the end of the Drug War, overseas wars, death penalty, and says that government should stay out of the marriage subject?? A good man with a sensible head on his shoulders who doesn’t wish to be a Washington tyrant like so many on the Right and Left. Those who oppose him seem to be deluded by all the propaganda used to cloud the truth about him. WE HAVE NO GREATER ADVOCATE AGAINST TYRANNICAL GOVERNMENT AND FOR LIBERTY THAN DR. RON PAUL! I implore you to prove me wrong with some inkling of substance that is relevant today… It has yet to be done. Don’t for one second think that Democrats are immune to a version of the Fantasyland they can obviously see many conservatives residing in. Both sides have pulled the wool over your eyes… Dr. Paul pulls it off.
Wester has it right. Mr Parry has drawn out the typical modern conservative brain washed into one mad idiot ideology thats dividing the country. I’m sure the National Chamber of Commence loves it. It’s brought in hundreds of millions from the wealthy class and their wannabes to it since they got their grand plot to help ‘business’s’ started in the 70’s. Conservatism pretty well controls everything now days and that includes Ron Paul’s version.
Who let the dogs out. Any article that causes respondents to lose their minds to the degree seen here gets mad props in my book. Keep it up yo.
We all have different opinions. Those opinions are based on our individual experiences and our individual learning.
So, we are all individuals…..we can all agree to this fact.
It is also a fact that we all have to live together on this planet…..we all agree to that as well.
Now a question; Should all of us individuals be governed and ruled by other indivduals?
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
Meanwhile in the world of hard reality.
Wow this guy has been so conditioned whom lets him write?Im just a regular guy but our economic system is flawed it makes no sense.As far as for all you well educated progressives come to detroit and see what welfare has done to my city come on the first of the month..The welfare receptions crack and drinks are on you fools!!and sheeple Dr.Paul tells the truth while you bury your head in the sand..For everyone else go to drudge or infowars for the real news there is a war on for your mind!And with authors like this we will win lol.
Welfare, or aid to women with dependent children, hasn’t existed since the Clinton administration abolished it. So, you are the one with the “buried head”. Detroit has been decimated by off-shoring industrial jobs, mainly due to slash and burn financial tactics like those practiced by Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital. It is a uniquely Republican disaster, in that it results in massive profits, bankrupts blue-collar workers, and somehow manages to convince the middle-class voter that it was all brought on by the “welfare” recipients who don’t actually even exist. Men don’t get welfare…unless they run corporations like General Electric, which pays no taxes and has transferred thousands and thousands of jobs to China. Drudge is only taken seriously by semi-literate white males who are angry that they are today no better off than the minorities they resent. You already lost. Decisively, and due to your own gullibility. Things will only get worse unless you turn off Rush Limbaugh and start thinking for yourself.
You only got half of it right. The other half is lazy, greedy, self-centered leftists who try to force socialism down their neighbors throats. They won’t take personal responsibility or quit taking freebies from others. I don’t listen to Limbaugh, Hannity, or Levin. Dems and Reps are in cahoots to take over the lives of everyone but I guess you just voted to hand it over to the Usurper. I am not ‘semi-literate’ nor ‘racist’, I am a middle-aged white guy with a minority wife and child, I have a 131 IQ and think for myself and read much of what our founding fathers left for us, so watch what you spew from your hate filled gob. Read some freaking books and get off the LSD, otherwise just go away.
Your IQ is the same as Hermann Goering’s! Did they test you when you were in therapy, or rehab? The hate-speech appears to be coming from you, based on the “watch out for what you spew” comment. Obviously, you have a self-actualization problem, or you wouldn’t be bragging about your IQ. That and three bucks will get you a latte at Starbucks!
Lets summarize the responses to my critiques:
– Paul is a racist
– Paul is a nut
– I am belligerent
– Middle aged white people who agree with any of Paul’s positions are racist (the irony in this criticism is truly entertaining)
Yet somehow Paul gets crushed in elections. This is just one more piece of evidence that most individuals in this country are now members of the feeder class who aren’t interested in debate, they are interested in the government goodies that the contributing class minority (mainly responsible adults like libertarians and Ron Paul supporters) are forced to pay for.
That’s right, we are all kooks, nuts, and racists but they’ll gladly take our money at gun point to pay for their hand outs.
So…you’re trying to say…you’re a middle-aged racist white guy? You surely must realize then, that the concept of the “feeder class”, ie. the “useless eaters”, was coined by the Nazi Party. Or…didn’t you know that after all?
To F. G. Sanford: Are you seriously that ignorant that you can’t find out for yourself what Dr. Paul has fought and stood for his entire career? PULL YOUR HEAD OUT! Ever heard of civil liberties and the Constitution? Read up because it’s not very mysterious stuff…
Robert Parry, I liked your great day for US Democracy better, but neither article has anything to say in praise of the eight Ron Paul supported limited foreign policy Republicans in the House, and Paul’s participation with stopping Romney,
http://freedomoutpost.com/2012/11/the-ron-paul-revolution-brings-in-8-congressmen/
I would like to see a quick united push on foreign policy issues instead of you Robert Parry knocking down one of the pillars a better world would be built on. Lets get to work on a united effort to close a base, stop an expensive plane and end an embargo. Nov 14 Cubans wont even need an exit visa to leave the country yet the US still embargos Cuba.
http://my.firedoglake.com/richardkanepa/2012/11/27/don-t-forget-the-huge-military-budget-vastly-larger-than-social-security-with-ripe-spots-easier-to-cut/
Another point we dont get history only tales of the victors, the search for unity is a major cause of war, why not different marriage divorce and property laws in different parts of the world, states rights relates to the small is beautiful movement.
Robert Parry, if I can reach you there will be more peace in this world.
All you paranoid, middle-aged, white men need to grow up – your gleaming rhetoric notwithstanding. Stop white-washing Paul’s racism, sexism and homophobia. Ron Paul is only acceptable-seeming because this past season there have been so many genuine nut-cases passing themselves off as Statesmen (and Women).
Very ignorant comment above for sure… why bother to offer your input if you have not the slightest clue as to what Dr. Paul stands for? I believe you are trying to address the Mittwits…
I think you just made Frances’ point. Just what it is Dr. Paul stands for is the mystery at the heart of the problem. Apparently, his lack of a coherent policy becomes whatever his fans think it is, but none of it bears much close scrutiny. He’ll never be President, so it’s a moot point anyway.
Fred,
Ron Paul stands for freedom.
But as Abraham Lincoln stated 150+ years ago; freedom is a slippery thing. A wolf tries to eat a sheep. The Shepherd stops the wolf. The sheep is grateful that the Shepherd had protected his freedom. The wolf is upset that his freedom to eat the sheep has been infringed. Particularly as he was used to eating the sheep.
Actually, I thought he said something like, “Democracy without constraints is like two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.”
Fred,
That’s a good one too.
One problem I have with Ron Paul is that he seems to be his own evil twin. Every time he said something that seemed to make sense, he followed it up with additional comments that were stark raving batcrap crazy. Another is that what little good sense he had that led him to making his sensible statements were apparently not passed on to his son, who is all batcrap and no sense.
Mr. Parry, please just stop writing this kind of article. You are an embarrassment to yourself trying to destroy opponents to “progressivism” and state control (which you are evidently a great fan of) come hell or high water. You are also insulting your read. If I want reality-unsoldered invective, I go to alternet for example.
When you are writing about the secret history of the power mongers, you are very good. But evidently you are not taking the appropriate conclusion about state control. Is there still Camelot beyond the stench of the feeding trough? Evidently you hope so, in spite of all evidence.
So please… stop.
And looking at his newest book, it really isn’t a surprise. “The book then explores the political deceptions that surrounded the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and the two George Bushes and explains how that false history entrapped Barack Obama.”
All that history has taught us is that Obama is the second coming of Bush. Anyone who fails to grasp that concept doesn’t have to oars in the water, let alone should they be calling themselves a “journalist”.
Couldn’t have said it better Sean.
There was no reason to go past the second paragraph: “In a near-hour-long rambling speechon Nov. 14, Paul also revealed himself to be an opponent of “pure democracy ..”
This guy calls himself an investigative journalist? From the looks of it, he didn’t bother even listening to, reading, or “investigating” Paul’s speech. What a pathetic excuse for a “journalist”.
Robert Perry refers to rep Paul’s “Final address to congress”. He isn’t mind reading. Paul has a long history from which Mr Perry has pulled various examples as well as quotes from the speech. Paul loves to throw the word “liberty” around without definition. Who doesn’t love “liberty”? But what does Paul mean by “liberty”? it is that meaning that Perry exposes when he says “Paul also revealed himself to be an opponent of “pure democracy†because government by the people and for the people tends to infringe on the “liberty†of businessmen who, in Paul’s ideal world, should be allowed to do pretty much whatever they want to the less privileged.” Of course Paul would not use those words. Parry uses them, I think, to make it clear what “liberty” in Paul’s world looks like.
“He isn’t mind reading. Paul has a long history from which Mr Perry has pulled various examples as well as quotes from the speech.”
Firstly, it’s Parry not Perry. Secondly, he didn’t cite anything so you’re claim here is kiddy bullshit. Until citations are posted and the full context of them are given merit, you and Mr. Parry will be disregarded as feeder class trolls.
You come on these boards and prove everything the author says about the rightwing propaganda by swallowing all the bullshite whole…..and YOU have the nerve to call someone else a troll.
Simply the meandering ramblings of a clever mind enslaved to an unyielding all encompassing bias. I regard the author as someone who is very intelligent but has made the flaw of deciding his conclusion before any thoughtful investigation and has bent the facts around his bias. The facts he cites are true but seem to lack any depth in their understanding of them. A clever mind suffering from a fatal conceit.
But I will say you’re right about Boehner and Paul Ryan being delusional. They are also frauds.
Laws were changed to shield working Americans from the worst predations of the super-rich, and in the days before mass media, social justice and access to legal representation, those predations would make todays pornography industry look like bedtime stories. There are only three enticements the world of the power-elite: money, power and sex. Modern social justice put the brakes on money and power, but it really hurt them most in the sex department. Whether you outright own other human beings, as in slavery, or exercise absolute control through the means to survival, the reality of the immorality rampant in the era before social justice is epic. And that is what they really miss.
All this took place before the visual arts, enhanced by technology, had a chance to record it. But a review of the prurient literature of the day leaves no doubt as to what the reality was like. The difference was, the wealthy could experience it in person as opposed to watching it on the internet. Kubrick’s film, “Eyes Wide Shut†was not a fantasy. Of coarse, it would make more sense to blame the current debt problem on the overreach of U.S. imperialism, the rush to “free trade†and the unwise relaxing of economic regulations. A succession of totally failed military misadventures (Don’t look now, but we haven’t won a war since Reagan attacked Grenada) didn’t help much either. So, in the minds of the religious right wingnuts, the obvious solution is to cut social programs, privatize social security and destroy any hope of a single-payer health care system. Somehow, these morons don’t realize that health care plus insurance company profit and overhead equals higher health care cost. They don’t realize that privatization of social security means that financial speculators would receive in return the biggest “too big to fail†umbrella in the history of capitalism, and all at the expense of taxpayers.
So, for you delusional right-wing religious fruitcakes, please keep supporting John Boehner, Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor and their ilk. Just as in the Robber Baron days, a whorehouse will be coming to a neighborhood near you. Then, you’ll have your dream-come-true: a real moral issue to bitch about instead of the sanctimonious hypocrisy you currently spout. Sex scandals in religious institutions today are just the tail-end of a long tradition of business as usual exploitation left over from the days of unfettered capitalism. They can’t wait to get those “perks†reinstated.
password
THANK YOU F.G.Sanford !!
“Somehow, these morons don’t realize that health care plus insurance company profit and overhead equals higher health care cost.”
You just got done typing that message on a computer likely made by a company with three to four times higher profit margin than insurance companies. Nice work!
Henry, come on now! Besides being a koolaid drinker, you also concern yourself with the idea that the insurance companies aren’t making enough money!
So Parry has a political book? That’s hilarious.
Don’t fret kids, you don’t even need to know the history of basic terms like “left-wing” and “right-wing” to write political books in today’s America!
Why so belligerent, haughty? Where can we find your blog? Books? Investigative journalism?
Parry presents a sober assessment.
I just ordered his latest book on Amazon for 64 cents. 10 of the 12 user reviews were positive.
The avalanche of propaganda we have been inundated with from birth by the shadow government over our government has made it very difficult to discern truth from distortion about what is really going on politically in America. Truth brings freedom, lies enslave. The most reliable way to know truth is to know the only true God and His Son, Jesus Christ. And to walk humbly with Him while He reveals the real truth we seek. Man’s pride and arrogance will ultimately steer him into deception. The blind will lead the blind to a place they both do not want to go. I pray that God would raise up ten million Ron Paul’s before it is too late for America. Our nation is racing headlong for the edge of a disastrous cliff while the international banksters pay homage to satan for his evil plan. God help us as a people and as a nation to repent and change course!!! Without His help we are doomed to enslavement under the one world government. 8^(
I DISAGREE….with the first 2 comments…
I was an avid Paul fan….I would have written him in right up to November 1st, when he officially announced he was NOT in the running – not even for write-ins.
There were a few things about Paul that caused a niggling doubt, but on what I considered the most important things, like bringing our troops home and defending THIS country, and ending foreign aid to wealthy countries – at a very bad economic time for us – and the elimination of TSA was an added bonus…. AND HE WAS THE BEST CHOICE, for the country.
But I have to say Parry has isolated the policies that bothered me succinctly.
OH….who did I vote for?
On Nov 1st upon receipt of said official notice, it hit me…HARD…OMG – Rmoney could really end up in the Whitehouse….so I did what I felt was the responsible thing – and voted for his strongest opponent – Obama
OPE!…..it jumped from 2 to 5 while I was typing
Like so many Republicans and Libertarians (and more and more Democrats), the free market is primary; people secondary. They exist to support the market. That, however, is not what America or any country has any business doing.
Jerry you have no clue what the term “free market” means. In free market economics, the market IS the people. It’s nothing more than people interacting together in a voluntary fashion. They aren’t separate.
Bare in mind that the free market Republicans advocate is in no way a free market. You could probably define free market better than the average neocon Republican.
How did this s***-hole of a website get a Google News journalism license? This is one of the poorest-written opinion pieces I have ever read.
Mr. Parry, what you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone who reads this is now dumber for having done so. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul. lol
I’d like to add that I don’t expect the author to respond to any critiques that are offered up. It seems the fastest way to garner blog hits is to bash Ron Paul.
Too bad for these blog owners most Ron Paul supporters are tech savvy and use ad-blockers.
I did not get too far. The author makes wild jumps… If paul liked one policy in 1912 then he likes everything they did! Wow, where does he get this stuff?!”?!?
“In a near-hour-long rambling speechon Nov. 14, Paul also revealed himself to be an opponent of “pure democracy†because government by the people and for the people tends to infringe on the “liberty†of businessmen who, in Paul’s ideal world, should be allowed to do pretty much whatever they want to the less privileged.”
Strawman #1 noted. Paul is against Democracy because, in the words of a wise man, “Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch”. The founders of this country knew this, that’s why they created the Bill of Rights. When the majority gets to decide everything, the minority always get trampled on in a Democracy. Further, Paul has NEVER said that businessmen should be able to do whatever they want. Please provide the citation to him saying that.
“Before then, everything was working just fine, in Paul’s view. But the reality was anything but wonderful for the vast majority of Americans. A century ago, women were denied the vote by law and many non-white males were denied the vote in practice. Uppity blacks were frequently lynched.”
Strawman #2 noted. Paul has never said that was everything “was working just fine” prior to the progressive era. Paul has gone on record in favor of many Constitutional amendments that corrected things like slavery and voting rights (i.e. the Nineteenth Amendment). Your mischaracterizations here has no basis on anything he has ever said.
Your next three paragraphs are arguments based on your strawman #2 and as such have no baring on anything except your own misconceptions about Paul’s views.
“It took the Great Depression and its mass suffering to finally convince most Americans “that sacrificing some liberty was necessary,†in Paul’s curious phrasing, for them to gain a living wage, a measure of security and a little respect.
So, under President Franklin Roosevelt, laws were changed to shield working Americans from the worst predations of the super-rich. Labor standards were enacted; unions were protected; regulations were imposed on Wall Street; and the nation’s banks were made more secure to protect the savings of depositors.”
You’re bypassing a massive part of US history in regards to progressive policies applied at the Federal level in the name of helping the working man. Specifically the Federal Reserve Act and the Sixteenth Amendment. Austrian economists have made a very strong case for how the Federal Reserve greatly exacerbated the Great Depression and every recession since 1913. Address those arguments instead of fast forwarding half a century and then your argument here might garner some merit.
“Many social injustices also were addressed during Ron Paul’s dreaded last century. Women got the vote and their position in the country gradually improved, as it did for blacks and other minorities with the belated enforcement of the equal rights provisions of the 14th Amendment and passage of civil rights legislation.”
Ron Paul signed a pledge that used the fourteenth amendment as it basis. How then are you going to sit here on your blog and claim he doesn’t support it? What Paul has said, if anything, about this is that he thinks it was unnecessary to begin with due to provisions already in the Constitution. Amazing when you put things into context huh?
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/rep-ron-paul-signs-personhood-pledge-reservations
“And as for the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the pious morality of the Robber Barons included the cruel exploitation of their workers, the flaunting of obscene wealth amid widespread poverty, and the routine bribery of politicians. How that measures up to moral superiority is a mystery.”
And has Paul has pointed out, this was enabled by 1.) corporate charters granted by the state which shield business owners from being held personally liable for their actions and 2.) government authority in market intervention providing certain corrupt business owners a single point of manipulation to avoid being held accountable. Government creates artificial liability shields and then it must respond with other preemptive regulations to prevent abuse of those shields. Government solution to a government created problem.
“Paul’s historical incoherence extends to what the Framers were doing with the Constitution. He argues that they were seeking “to limit government†in 1787 when they drafted the Constitution. But that was not their primary intent. The Framers were creating a strong and vibrant central government to replace the weak and ineffective one that existed under the Articles of Confederation.”
So then by your logic the government would be more limited without a Constitution. Are you seriously going to make that argument? The Constitution is most certainly a document which limits governmental powers. That is basic American history 101, continue to deny it. Have at it.
“Of course, by definition, all constitutions set limits on the power of governments. That’s what constitutions do and the U.S. Constitution is no exception. However, if the Framers wanted a weak central government and strong states’ rights, they would not have scrapped the Articles of Confederation, which governed the United States from 1777 to 1787. The Articles made the states “independent†and “sovereign†and left the federal government as a supplicant.”
Openly contradicted yourself in the very next paragraph, impressive! If the founders didn’t want significant powers granted to the states then please explain the Tenth amendment. You are examining the beliefs of the founders based entirely on the Constitution. You need to include the Bill of Rights as well.
“The key point, which Paul and other right-wingers seek to obscure about the Constitution, is that it granted broad powers to the central government along with the mandate to address the nation’s “general Welfare.—
Paul is self-described libertarian, an inherently left-wing political ideology. You really need to read up on basic political science before writing several pages of inane blog rantings.
“General Washington, in particular, hated the Articles because they had left his Continental Army begging individual states for supplies during the Revolutionary War. And after the hard-won independence, Washington saw European powers exploiting the divisions among the states and regions to whittle away that independence.”
Your argument here is tenuous and silly. Essentially what you are saying is that because the founders wanted a stronger central government that they would have approved of unlimited authority for the Federal government. The entire “Remaking Madison” section relies on this fallacious foundation so it doesn’t even deserve rebuttal.
“The Framers also understood that the country would not remain locked in a late 18th Century world. Though they could not anticipate all the changes that would arise over more than two centuries, they incorporated broad powers in the Constitution so the country through its elected representatives could adapt to those times.”
Ron Paul agrees with the provision they put in place to handle this: Constitutional amendments.
“The true genius of the Framers was their pragmatism, both for good and ill, in the cause of protecting American independence and unity. On the for-ill side, many representatives in Philadelphia recognized the evils of slavery but accepted a compromise allowing the states to count African-American slaves as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of representation in Congress.”
You are generalizing. The founders weren’t some collective hive mind, they all had varying beliefs and can in NO way be characterized as being pragmatists or idealists. John Adams for example was probably more of a pragmatist then an idealist. Thomas Jefferson was probably more of a idealist than a pragmatist. Don’t lump them all into one group. Outside of this, true pragmatists don’t sign their own death warrants. So you might argue there was a little of both, but overall you can’t just make a blanket statement without looking silly.
As to your section on “The Right’s Emergence” you labeled free marketeers as a right-wing movement. That showcases your ignorance. Free market ideology in Western society by most accounts became most popular among classical liberals, which is unarguably left-wing. I simply can’t address any of your arguments in this section with such egregious errors in your historical understandings.
You are rewriting history to fit your narrative and it’s obvious. Good effort but terrible execution, 6/10.
Its hard to get past this point:
“But Paul’s blaming “progressive†reforms of the last century for the nation’s current economic mess lacks any logic, more a rhetorical trick than a rational argument, a sophistry that holds that because one thing happened and then some bad things happened, the first thing must have caused the other things.
The reality is much different. Without Theodore Roosevelt’s Progressive Era and Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, the direction of America’s capitalist system was toward disaster, not prosperity. Plus, the only meaningful “liberty†was that of a small number of oligarchs looting the nation’s wealth. (It would make more sense to blame the current debt problem on the overreach of U.S. imperialism, the rush to “free trade†and the unwise relaxing of economic regulations.)”
The author uses the exact same logic as proof, as which he discredited a paragraph earlier. The technique no different than that of Paul. Mainly, he speaks as though to sway people whom already have a bias in favor of his opinion.
It boils down to one simple concept; Are you able to morally justify the use of violence or force, in order to achieve a social objective? If no, then you are objectively moral and there is hope for humanity. If yes, then your cognitive dissonance is the cornerstone of virtually all the hardship and death humankind has perpetrated upon itself.
The NeanderPauls are out. Dancing like it’s 1899.
And the ad hominem feeder class is out with zero substance and zero rebuttal. Shocker!
This article is like any other article by someone who doesn’t care what the facts are, as long as he creates an emotional response in his reader which makes them want to continue to read what he writes. The plight of liberty is the ultimate argument for a fair chance for everyone. Instead, what we have is a political system that feeds the public rhetoric to get votes while making deals with special interests which go against the interests of the ordinary american, all the while using our military to secure favorable conditions for big businesses to get wealthy off of trade with the governments we set up abroad.
hahahahahha, do yourselves a favor and watch ron pauls farewell to congress speech and then ask yourselves how the hell this author came to these conclusions. its comical.
This author is so {Psy-ops) full of shit. I could not read past the 5th paragraph bef0re feeling like taking a dump.
The author of this needs to get an education, it is obvious there is a lack of understanding on his part when discussing congressman Paul .
The author seems to fancy himself a “mind reader” given all the claims he makes about Ron Paul “beliefs”. The article provides very little in the way of hard information, but it is unfortunately like so much else that’s written today; little substance, lots of opinion and supposition.
Boring and tiresome.
There was pleny of hard evidence and historical veracity. The real problem, which is not only boring and tiresome( but dissembling and prevaricating), is conservative acolytes like you who embrace the demagoguery of a Ron Paul while eschewing facts.
Read the article again, moron; and while you’re at it, take a good look at the Constitution (for the first time). This article has specific quotes from the founders, specific references to legislation, and specific definitions. Once again, the obtuse gooses of oblivion win the day.
According to you and Mr. Paul, 2+2=76. The tactic, which has worked so well for the Republican Party, is if you don’t like the reality that exists, just create a new one! Even if it is incoherent and comical – one must deny, deny, deny.
Is that really any way to live, much less any way to govern?
Why don’t you all tell us and explain what a great job democrats and republicans have been doing for the last couple generations?
No need to read minds when the full transcript of Paul’s speech are linked to in the article. We are all free to read it for ourselves.
Excellent article over all-score of 99.