Ron Paul Mega-Thread (Mergeness)

Hypothetically speaking, Marshall, how would Fred's presidency, based on what you know about him now, be better for America than Ron's?

 

"Screw all this talk about wars, I just want a president who follows the constitution. I know, it's a lot to ask. " - Yeah, right?!
Someone who actually follows through on their oath to uphold & defend the Constitution? There is nothing so powerful as an idea whose time has come.
I say the time has come.

 

So it says that 98% of our Senators can get caught up in hysteria?

We should scrutinize everyone. Not just the one who thought differently. Just because many here disagree with much of what Feingold says, doesn't mean EVERYTHING he says is wrong. That's ad hominem. In this case, I think he was right to scrutinize those of us/fellow senators who got caught up in the "we gotta do something" hysteria.

The fact that 98% of senators got caught up in the hysteria, doesn't mean we should excuse them for it, it means we should feel pretty lame about the state of our political system.

Sure, throughout history there are tons of examples of a vast majority of people getting caught up in hysteria. That doesn't make it either okay, or justifiable.

 

Marshall, I am not going to address the name-calling portion of your post. This is the High Road, afterall, and I don't intend to answer name calling with name calling.

But I would like for you to elaborate on what you said, because I really don't understand how I was supposed to have taken your comments regarding Fred voting for the Patriot Act any other way than I did. Why do you think it was ok for Fred to vote for Patriot? You seem to be saying that it is OK for Fred to vote for the Patriot Act for no other reason than because everyone else did too. If that is not what you meant, then please tell me what you meant.

I am not trying to be argumentative. Fred is one of the few candidates I would even consider, but given his record regarding Patriot, expanding welfare through Medicare, and his support for Campaign Finance Reform, I am having a hard time supporting him when there are candidates in the race who don't support those things.

In what tangible ways would a Fred presidency be better for American than a Ron Paul presidency? If you can articulate an answer to this question, you might be able to sway readers to your side. But simply discounting those who disagree with you as "lame" probably won't sway many minds.

 

edit; wow, I'm real good at math.

 

Lone, where did I name call? Saying you should be embarrassed? That's name calling? Not where I come from.

I already explained what I meant. Please read again.

In my opinion, sometimes, there are actions needed that, for the time, are the right thing to do. I believe the Patriot Act, at the time and place in history was the right thing to do. Period. I would have voted for it myself. I sure am not going to denounce a senator that was acting in the National Interest of this country and it's security. For the cranial immature, the point about all of the Senators but one, taking action of the same, shows that in this time in history, it was a belief in our Senate that this measure was needed. Furthermore, who's to say it wasn't needed? I have no doubt the Patriot Act has been very beneficial to us in the way it was meant to be beneficial, more than we know. I believe it has been an extremely useful tool in fighting terrorist and I have no doubt it's beneficial to this day. It's better today in how it's written than it was then and will more than likely be better the next time something is done about it, which I'm sure there will be.

Senate hysteria? You stopped the immigration bill, why didn't you stop the Patriot Act? We have the power. Why didn't we? I already know the answer, it's a rhetorical question. Again, I'm not about to denounce a man that was doing what his country and constituents desired and felt was the best action at the time. So, don't blame Fred. All Senators but ONE......Blame yourself.

So, when I hear someone say that voting for a man that supported this act, that was designed and deemed necessary by the United States Senate and, the people of this country, for the National Security of this Nation, directly after the worse terrorist attack on our soil in history, is a reason not to vote for him, I say Bullsnot.

As far as Fred and Ron? I have already given my opinion about why I think RP would not be the best president for this county. His foreign policy or lack thereof. In my book, this is important enough to blow it for RP, for me. You're welcome to go back through the thread and read, do a search if you need help finding it. To make it simple for you, I think RP's idea's, plans and suggestions suck. I think Fred brings a better balance overall. Besides, he can win. Paul's chances are nil for reasons I have already described. That makes him a No Go, too.

I've already addressed the other two things.

Not everything is black and white and I think it's too bad that some of you can't see anything but black and white. I think you can though and just use black and white for debate. Can't blame you but I don't buy into your short sight.

A good example of the same thing is, Bush. Bush was a President that for time he happened to be elected, was needed. I'm proud to say that I voted for him. In the time in history, especially when I look back and see that we could have had Al Gore during 9-11, I feel fortunate to have had Bush as a President. Same with Bush over Kerry, but not as much so as in the beginning. However, I think his time is wearing out and what he was needed for has passed.

There are other candidates out there, Fred being the best I can see so far, that can carry us forward in a better direction, and use better ways and means of doing so, than where Bush has us headed, on many fronts. But as Bush was needed, so was the Patriot Act. Does it mean they're both needed in their present form today? Nope. Will I be patient knowing both will change, and for the better? Yep. Things are not black and white and things do not remain the same. I am glad we error on the side of security knowing that we can, and I fully believe we will, adjust and balance back.

 

So would you support a politician who wanted to abolish the Constitution and set up a military dictatorship in the name of the National Interest and security? At some point you have to draw the line. History is replete with mistakes made by our politicians in the name of the national interest. As they say, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

Also, there was no real discussion about the Patriot Act in the Senate. Many Senators did not read the bill, nor even realize what the bill contained at the time they voted for it. How is someone acting in the national interest?

 

Are you actually illiterate or are you being purposefully obtuse?

Ron Paul has a detailed description of how he would conduct foreign policy on his website:

http://www.ronpaul2008.com/issues/war-and-foreign-policy/

Now, just because you disagree with him, doesn't give you the right to say the man has no foreign policy.

 

I'm not sure if this was posted yet. I didn't see it in this thread anywhere:


Ron Paul Tops McCain in Cash on Hand

July 06, 2007 1:14 PM

ABC News' George Stephanopoulos Reports: Though often regarded as a longshot candidate for president, Republican Ron Paul tells ABC News that he has an impressive $2.4 million in cash on hand after raising an equal amount during the second quarter, putting him ahead of one-time Republican frontrunner John McCain, who reported this week he has only $2 million in the bank.

In an exclusive interview taped Friday and airing Sunday on "This Week," Paul said his campaign is on a better trajectory than McCain's.

"I think some of the candidates are on the down-slope, and we're on the up-slope," said Paul.

Paul's cash on hand puts him in third place in the Republican field in that important metric, although he is well behind leader Rudy Giuliani, who has $18 million in the bank, and Mitt Romney, with $12 million.

Paul, who polls show with support in the low single digits, said his surprisingly strong fundraising is the best measure of his support.

"I think people have underestimated the number of people in this country who are interested in a freedom message," says the Republican congressman from Texas, who has strong libertarian leanings.

Click HERE to watch a clip from the interview.

To watch the full interview, tune in to "This Week" on Sunday (check local listings).

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2007/07/ron-paul-tops-m.html

 

This is a false comparison. The whole point of the immigration defeat is that this is one of the very very few times that conservatives stood up to Bush. For the most part they rolled over again and again. They didn't stop the horrendous spending, they didn't stop the prescription drug horror, they didn't stop the outsourcing of foreign policy to the neocons.



_________________________________________________________

www.ronpaul2008.com

Two fantastic Austrian weapons:

One is mechanical: http://www.glock.com/

The other is intellectual: Austrian Economics www.mises.org

 

That's ridiculous. It's an attempt at paraphrasing to your own thoughts. If that's indeed what they are, that's ridiculous.

Yes, I think that's basically no foreign policy. I haven't heard him outline in detail anything regarding dealings with any country. I've never heard him discuss how would deal with the war on terror? How would he deal with Bin Laden? What would he do if we had another terrorist attack on our soil? What's his stance on how we deal with intelligence gathering at home and abroad, and for what? What do we do with life after Iraq? What if the democtaitic Gov't in Iraq is toppled by terrorist? What if it becomes Extremest Iran West? Iran and Nukes? North Korea? Do we bring home troops from South Korea too? Kosavo? Do we continue Defensive Missile Intercept Technology? Do we go back to the Clinton days of letting our military go to hell in a hand basket or do we continue to fund it and advance offensive, defensive and intelligence gathering technology. How do we deal with the Islamic Jihad religious movement targeting ruling the world and death to anyone in their way? Etc, etc. etc. All I have heard is, bring home troops, secure boarders, trade and everyone loves us.

 

Nope. We have the power and didn't use it, period. Nothing false about that.

 

Those are all good questions; in fact I would like for Bush to answer some of those questions also, he has had 7 years to think up some answers.

You didnt answer the question, so I will rephrase. If it is OK to support the Patriot Act in the name of the national interest, what else is it ok to support? How far are you willing bend liberty in an attempt to achieve safety? Seriously, why can't you answer the question?

 

Well then you're being purposefully obtuse and you think wrong.

You can find the answers to your questions here:

http://www.ronpaullibrary.org/

He's stated his position on most of your questions many times over, it just appears like you've either never read them or choose to ignore them.

I can't seem to find anything online about Fred Thompson and how he would deal with any of those questions. Oh, and we all know how Bush chose to deal with Bin Laden:

 

What, you want to speak about the unknown? Make stuff up? That's asinine.

In my opinion, if our National Security is at stake, or your children's life/death, I would have no problem with Gov't listening to bad guys, under the rules that have been established, in order to save you're child. I have a whole lot of confidence they're not interested in your blathering as much as you think they are.

 

Marshall...

Would you have that same confidence in our Gov't if Hillary was the Head Honcho?

Biker

 

Well, that kind of assumes that there is anything or, the lack anything, that would make me feel comfortable with Hillary in the Whitehouse.

But to be more to the point. Yes, I would. These daily decisions of whom to listen to and whom not to listen to are made on a much lower level the POTUS. Call me naive.

Besides, do you think there's any law that would stop Hillary from anything? I don't.

 

GT,

Thanks for the link. I think RP has some good ideas on Counter/Anti-Terrorism.

 

Give me a break Paul even has a book out detailing his foreign policy. http://www.mises.org/store/Foreign-Policy-of-Freedom-A-P359C0.aspx?AFID=1

That in addition to numerous articles and what must be hundreds of congressional speeches.



_________________________________________________________

www.ronpaul2008.com

Two fantastic Austrian weapons:

One is mechanical: http://www.glock.com/

The other is intellectual: Austrian Economics www.mises.org

 

Biker sez:

To which Marshall replies:

That's really all I need to know right there.

 

Not a Paul article but an excellent article in favor of a non-interventionist foreign policy, esp. in the Middle East by former ABC Middle East correspondent Charles Glass.

I think his conclusion about relying on the UN is wrong but overall many good points.


http://www.charlesglass.net/archives/2007/06/what_luttwak_di.html


What Luttwak didn't say

Prospect Issue 135 01 Jun 07

Edward Luttwak is right that the middle east is not important enough to fight over. That's why the US should withdraw from Iraq and stop providing aid to Israel.

Over the past few weeks, American planes have landed at Beirut airport with arms and ammunition for the Lebanese army. The army's battle with a small Islamist militia in a Palestinian refugee camp in north Lebanon has galvanised the Bush administration to support a middle east army in crisis. But what does Lebanon have to do with the US and its national interests?

Even if Lebanon connects, however tangentially, with the twin western concerns of Israel and oil, there is no strong case for America to involve itself in Lebanese affairs. As Edward Luttwak said-arguing in the May 2007 issue of Prospect that the west should start to take the middle east less seriously-"Strategically, the Arab-Israeli conflict has been almost irrelevant since the end of the cold war... And global dependence on middle eastern oil is declining."

I am not denigrating the seriousness of the violence in Lebanon and its potential to push the country back into civil war. Nor do I lack passion for Lebanon, my home for many years and birthplace of my maternal grandparents. Its politics fascinate me, in part because the country governs itself much as it did in Ottoman times-with tribal leaders seeking outside protection, allying with one another and, occasionally, battling old friends. Lebanon, like the rest of the region, masked its conflicts in the garb of the cold war when it needed to, and it is adept at portraying itself as a battleground between secularism and Islamic fundamentalism now. The game, however, has always been local-which pasha or bey will dominate which hilltop, which tribe will take the larger share of the trade in banking or hashish, which local commander will pledge his men to which regional overlord. Lebanon happens to be significant to me. But it is not important to the US.

Supporters of American intervention in Lebanon may contend that, without US military support, Syria will come to dominate the country. The Shia Hizbullah will gain the upper hand against the Sunnis, Druze and Christians. Israel might have to invade again. These outcomes are possible, perhaps probable, but, unless you are Lebanese, so what? America approved the Syrian interventions in Lebanon in 1976, 1986 and 1990; it may well approve the next.

The US need not play every political game on earth. Half a million American troops are losing a war in Iraq, the US is waging war in Afghanistan, and it has troops stationed in a majority of the world's countries. It is taking part, covertly and overtly, in small wars in Colombia, the Philippines and a dozen other places. It provides training and materiel to governments around the globe, usually unelected, to keep the peasants down, drive them from the land, sustain local clients and ensure American business pride of place at trading tables everywhere.

Lebanon is one of the most telling examples of the futility of America's global policies, and the hell of it is that America has been in Lebanon before. In 1982 and 1983, the US stationed marines in Beirut, ostensibly to protect the Palestinian refugee camps from further massacres of the type that Israel and its Lebanese Christian allies inflicted in September 1982. It also sent military advisers to train the Lebanese army, whose commanders understood American support to mean they could arrest, torture and otherwise dispose of their enemies. But the US could not hold the Lebanese army together, the Lebanese government's opponents drove the marines out of the country in February 1984 and for seven years American citizens could not walk the streets of Beirut without being kidnapped or killed. President Reagan once said that the future of the free world depended on the ability of the Lebanese army to hold out in the mountain village of Souk el-Gharb. Souk el-What? Despite US intervention, Souk el-Gharb fell. The US survived. And in 2007, whether the Nahr el-Bared refugee camp falls will not affect any American's safety or livelihood.

Edward Luttwak's otherwise snide and patronising critique of a region for which America has displayed an exaggerated imperial interest makes the valid observation that the middle east is not important enough to fight over. But Luttwak did not carry his argument to its obvious conclusion: if the mideast is no big deal, the US should cut all arms sales and military aid to the region. That means withdrawing from Iraq; closing bases in Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain; ending arms deliveries to the reactionary monarchy in Saudi Arabia; and cutting aid to Israel.

Why should the American taxpayer give $5.5bn in total aid to Israel every year so that it can dominate a region of diminished strategic value? If the US doesn't give Israel cluster bombs, Israel won't drop millions of them all over south Lebanon. And why send arms to Saudi Arabia, a country that has never fought a war? The Congressional Research Service reported this year that the US had delivered $17.9bn in weapons to Saudi Arabia between 1998 and 2005. If the US didn't give Saudi Arabia the advanced tanks and jet fighters that it can never deploy, there would be no danger of the weapons finding their way into the hands of Islamist militants. The US is arming Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and the Fateh portion of the Palestine authority. In whose interest is that? The US should introduce a resolution in the UN security council to enforce an arms embargo on all states in the middle east-at least until they resolve their disputes without benefit of the American firepower that makes their wars all the more destructive. That would make the region-and the rest of us-safer.

 

I've tried to avoid getting into this but now I'm going to get my feet wet.

Marshall seems to think the Patriot Act will evolve into something less draconian in the future. But when was the last time a government gave up such power peacefully? I know, the Office of Price Administration (OPA) was peacefully abolished after WWII but I think that's the last such program to die a quiet death.
Instead, we now have the abolishment of Habeus Corpus and Posse Comitatus. That doesn't sound to me like Big Brother is giving up much power there. No, governments - ALL governments, ours included, spend every available moment seeking more power, not less.
My reading of the Patriot Act left me with the feeling it was a crude club to be used by a flailing blind man to ward off enemies. More recent refinements have given it increased effectiveness with decreased oversight. Oh sure, each new wrinkle Congress writes into it gives lip-service to public security but pays for it with public freedom. I don't believe it's a good trade.
I do believe Ron Paul can restore the freedom that's been stolen from us in the name of safety. I believe that the American people will demand that Congress change its present course and support him. For me to believe otherwise would require me to give up my belief in America.

 

I'm more leaning towards Duncan Hunter than I am towards Ron Paul, but I'm impressed with the recent fundraising and cash on hand difference between Paul and McCain.

First, McCain's all establishment support while Ron Paul has no establishment support.

Second, McCain is one of the "big 3" (maybe big 4 with Thompson). The Big 3 are all unacceptable on 2nd amendment and many other issues. With one of them in free fall on their way out, that sends a message to DC that we will not be having a coronation.

I have not decided who I am supporting in the primary. Hunter I allign closest with on issues, but Paul may get my vote. Maybe Thompson. It depends on a lot of things and if I decide to vote strategicaly to stop Rudy or damn the torpedos and vote my conscience like I did in the 2000 primary. There's a lot I like about Ron Paul, and some votes I didn't like (gun manufacturers)

Judges are my biggest issue.

 

Marshall, just to make it clear, you do support the Patriot Act right?

 

Originally posted by Marshall:

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
-Benjamin Franklin