If the thermometer on the Ron Paul Campaign fundraising graphic were real, it overheated and blew out the top of the glass last night. Their goal for this quarter, ending December 31st, was $12 million. As of noon here in Belfast, they have $12.6 million. The rate has been accelerating: if you watch for ten minutes you will see the number increase by thousands of dollars.
There has been grudging admission of his existence by the big name political news outlets, but they are hoping he will at some point ‘just go away’. That may not be the case. I do not think these people understand what is going on: Ron Paul’s campaign is as much about getting the ideas out as it is about getting elected. As long as there is money backing him, he will keep running, keep talking and keep growing our ranks.
Despite decades of work, the majority of the populace has no idea what libertarianism is about, and if they do, it is “aren’t they the bunch who want to legalize heroin?”. They do not understand the context because they have never really heard it. The strength of the Paul campaign shows there is a real strength to our philosophy. It shows a real yearning for a return to individualistic ideals. People want a government much restricted in size, one whose job is to defend our liberty and privacy rather than destroy it “for National Security Reasons”.
Amongst the other candidates there is really no one I much care for. I will admit that I still hold an “ANYONE but McCain” grudge. If he or Huckabee win at the convention, I might be voting for the Democrat. I do not find either Hillary or Obama as loathsome as I find those two.
Support for Ron Paul does not translate into support for any other Republican candidate. Quite the contrary. I am not now, nor have I ever been a member of the Republican Party. I and millions like me have either not voted or voted straight LP. if Ron is not the candidate we will simply revert to form. I really cannot imagine myself getting worked up about any of the other candidates. No, not even for Thompson. My questions to him would be: how many government departments will you call for the abolition of on your first day in office? Which ones are they? What is your target percentage for cutting the Federal government? 25%? 50%? More?
I much look forward to Ron and our people being at the Republican convention and injecting exactly that sort of small government rhetoric into the event. Our folk will not be present to watch balloons drop and see and be seen. They will be there to rock the boat: politely… but forcefully.
At least one pundit has claimed we now live in a ‘Momentucracy” where primary votes do not matter. The sense of ‘momentum’ and ‘inevitability’ which the candidate garners from big media is what settles the issue and causes the contenders to retire. There appears to be evidence of truth to his statement for much of the period from the seventies on. However… the internet may change that. In 1960 the televised debates revolutionized presidential politics. In the 2004 election the Dean Campaign showed how the internet might soon do the same. Few have been saying, as I am about to, that it might change the ground rules entirely. What will happen if backers of a candidate can bypass the drone of mass media against their candidate and for the Anointed One? No one believes the media any more, so given alternatives we just might find that politics gets a great deal more unpredictable and interesting in the coming years.
And, by the way… I love the sight of dollars rolling into the Paul campaign in the morning. It reminds me of… Liberty.
In the time it took me to write this article the number went up to $12.9 million…
A cup of coffee and a small bit of work… and now I see they have blown through $13M and are still climbing rapidly!
The $14 million mark has been passed as of 17:41 UTC
Over $16 million just after midnight UTC and there are no signs of slowing…
Quiet this morning since the US is just getting up. The counter spun up to $18.2 million whilst I slept…
“I will admit that I still hold an ‘ANYONE but McCain’ grudge. If he or Huckabee win at the convention, I might be voting for the Democrat. I do not find either Hillary or Obama as loathsome as I find those two.”
That’s okay. A year’s worth of either administration would bring you around.
I don’t support RP, but I have to admit I cannot help but gloat a little. Call it “underdog syndrome” or whatever.
Yeah, and I’d like to thank all of the purists and “teach them a lesson” people for eight years of the first Clinton and 11 months and counting of Speaker Pelosi.
Ron Paul is crazy like a shithouse rat and either painfully ignorant or a damn liar (or both), to say nothing of his fan club, and I’d still vote for him over any of the Democrats.
And what about the 8 years of more and more blatant destruction of our individual liberties by the current administration? The Patriot (‘traitor?) Act; the mass wiretapping, internet tapping, the moronic regulations, the asinine ‘caring conservatism’ legislation like ‘No child left untouched” and the Big Pharma Welfare act…
I really fail to see the difference.
From a distance I can hardly even tell that power changed hands in Congress. They are still just the same bunch thieving constitutional ignoramuses today as they were two years ago.
So the difference in the two parties is… what?
“So the difference in the two parties is… what?”
The order in which they take your rights away, of course.
I wish I could support RP, I really do. But he’s gotten too deep in bed with all the conspiracy nuts he could round up for me to feel good about his sensibilities, and even if his reasons for surrender are better than the Democrat reasons, he still wants to lose Iraq and Afghanistan. I’d fly to whatever state he ran in if he wanted to be governor, and I’d support any candidate who promised him a Cabinet slot that isn’t State or Defense. But I can’t back him for President. That said, here’s hoping he does get some of those issues out into the public – maybe next time we can get a libertarian I wouldn’t feel dirty about backing into the race.
Interesting times. Ron Paul is not going to become President, but he may have a huge impact all the same. He is raising subjects — like an appropriate, more modest role for government — that none of the other candidates really want to discuss.
Politics has become very strange. In the US, the Democrats are in thrall to an elite whose aims (green de-industrialization, open borders) are totally opposed to the interests of great majority of ordinary voters on whose support the elites rely. Meanwhile, Republicans lost all credibility by acting just like Bigger Government Democrats when they were given President, Senate & House.
Of course, in Olde Englande, there is the analogous issue that all the politicians want a bigger more intrusive EU while most of the voters don’t. But the UK does not (yet) have a Ron Paul to shake the politicians comfortable little consensus.
Alisa: 100% agreement. I do not think Ron will actually win because there are conservative forces within the Republican Party that will close ranks and pull whatever dirty tricks are needed to ensure ‘their’ man’ or someone just like him gets the nomination.
But no matter what happens, the genii is out of the bottle and they will not be able to put him back.
I am hoping Ron’s campaign will be the tipping point for our side. If he accomplishes nothing but that I will consider it a massively huge victory. Anything beyond that is just icing on the cake.
Dale: that was Alice, not me (although I happen to agree with her as well).
I am cheered by how well Ron Paul has done bringing in the money and getting the mesasge out.
However, the rise of Huckabee suggests to me that there are many GOP voters who really wish to confirm that it is the stupid party after all. Huckabee is even more offensive to the senses than Clinton and Giuliani.
What I think this makes quite clear is that the Reagan coalition is officially over: nobody with even a shred of libertarian makeup has been making inroads into the party — the conservatives will scream bloody murder about how we cost them the last election… but when they’re running against *us,* rather than the Democrats, what possible reason could there be to vote for them? 2006 saw as much anti-libertarian rhetoric out of the Republicans as it did fire going out at the Dems.
I’m with the OP: I’ve been a “hold my nose” national-secutiry voter for a while, but I will crawl naked over broken glass to vote against not just Clinton, but McCain as well.
The support for ronpaul2008.com is more than a little disturbing to me. It is disturbing because it indicates a small number of very passionate and dedicated advocates. Most people never donate any money to a candidate — it looks like most of ronpaul2008.com advocates have donated something.
When you have that high a percentage of passionate people in a group, and they don’t get what they want from the soapbox and the ballot box, they are a lot more likely than most to head to the ammunition box. I’m not even sure I consider that a bad thing anymore, either, given that the primary process as it exists is a de facto disenfranchisement of the majority of this country (and gives Iowa and New Hampshire a sort of aristocratic status), and disenfranchisement is what I have always seen as the impetus to violent revolution.
I’m sure there are other impediments to getting rid of them as well, but it seems that the early Iowa primary is one of the reasons why it will be so hard for the US to get rid of agricultural subsidies and tariffs. The yokels of the state are unlikely to back a candidate who isn’t willing to shovel all that cash down their necks. It wouldn’t matter too much. And when you think of how important the Iowa primary is seen as being….
The most significant thing about Ron Paul is that of all the various brands of libertarianism in the world, including all the ugly schizophrenic war-loving ones which think freedom springs from pre-emptive aggressive war and the gun barrel of an M1 tank, the one he is bringing to the American people is that of Misesian Austrianism; Peace, Liberty, and Prosperity. Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard would be overjoyed. Magnificent.
And no wonder so many Beltway Libertarians would rather support the neocons.
Go Ron Paul.
There’s hope for this country yet. The only real way Ron Paul could get this much money is if his ideas were popular, and they are. You would think that the Republicans would notice when the crazy old man at the bus stop receives this much funding. If there was a candidate that presented Paul’s views on liberty and was the least bit charismatic they could win the nomination.
Its such a relief to see Dale’s article on Samizdata when the ‘establishment’ libertarians/bloggers (e.g. Instapundit/ Cato/ Club for Growth etc.) seem to be embarassed by the most successful libertarian candidate ever.
I suspect that for some (e.g. Glenn/ Vodkapundit/ etc) it has to do with the war on Iraq. Hell. even I supported W since it was the ‘second-best’ strategy at the time to confront fundamentalism aggressively, compared to the Democrats pathetic ‘3rd-best’ strategy of placating the fundamentalists and presenting America as weak to the world.
But here’s RP advocating dis-engagement and withdrawl based on the ‘best’ possible strategy – i.e. non-interventionism with a big stick – and I have no qualms about abandoning my earlier support for W and jumping ship to RP. Why can’t the other guys?
Earlier I just didnt realize candidates like RP existed or had the faintest of chances of being heard!!! Now that I know, there’s NO turning back.
I am of a somewhat similar mind. I am quite glad that we fought and one in Iraq; I am ecstatic that we are now on the downhill side of things there… so I can start worrying about what needs worried about in 2007, and that is how to stop the surveillence state dead in its tracks in the US. I am not a pundit with a one issue mind. There is a balance to things and that balance has shifted enough so that I can pretty much not care about the part of Ron’s platform I disagree with.
After some 40 years as a libertarian activist, the idea that we are finally breaking into the system and getting the word out to a mass audience is one I cannot possibly not like.
I am also hoping it will have some coat tails to help with Carla’s efforts in Massachusetts.
Yes, 2008 is going to be a fun year for us.
While I like Paul’s fiscal positions, he’s clearly out of his league on foreign policy. There is no such thing as non-intervention. If you don’t go to the world it will eventually come to you.
If some moronic hermits living in Afghanistan can orchestrate the destruction of the World Trade Center and Pentagon, what will they and the countless others opposed to capitalism and free will manage to do if the US military is at home fighting forest fires, floods and whatever to kill time?
Very naive.
Part of RP’s appeal is also due to the strain in American voters that believe in isolationism – If we leave them alone, they would leave us alone.
Not wrong, perhaps, but naive and stupid. Very naive. Too much has happened over the centuries for the US to even think it can pull back into its borders. Trade, if nothing else, would force its participation in global politics.
Still, it should serve as a wakeup call to the rest of the world. Hello? The US has a semi-popular candidate who is dead set on isolationism. Do you REALLY want that?
Come to think of it, the rest of the world is just as stupid to want the Americans to mind their own business…
TWG: this is a very good point you are making – it makes me re-think my attitude towards voting for Paul. Still, and on the other hand, the rest of the world might just shrug their shoulders in a “those crazy Americans with their weird peculiarities again” manner and not get it, just like they do about 2nd amendment and other issues. Never underestimate human stupidity.
Exactly.
RP fans: what does he say about global warming ? That’s the insanity du jour, I’d like to know what’s his take.
RP on global warming.
Ron Paul Answers Global Warming Question at Iowa Straw Poll (YouTube)
Personally I do not think a President should need to state their opinion on global warming any more than they need to state their opinion on who should be in the Superbowl. I do not see it as a matter which should involve the government unless it comes down to using Army choppers to pull people out of their flooded homes if they were too stupid to sell out and move.
It also might be a good idea to file for repayment of costs to the insurance companies. After all, the rescues are one of the costs the property owner should be insured for.
If Ron Paul was running on an isolationist programme, he would merely be wrong, but this is not his error. Whatever he himself believes in private, he is running on an explicitly Chomskyite programme that can only plausibly described as wicked. As for those Libertarians who are sticking their fingers in their ears claiming he is merely saying “screw the world” when his crew of crackhead supporters are screaming “screw America” loud enough for everyone to hear, I used to consider them touchingly naive, but I’ve been watching too long as this grotesque nightmare just gets worse and worse and that excuse just doesn’t hold any more.
If you vote for Ron Paul in spite of the kind of scum he has chosen to represent, then you’re either a bad person or a moron, end of story.
Chomskyite? You fail. It just proves you are a complete moron.
I wonder if Andrew Sullivan is a bad person or a moron? I don’t know the answer to that, but I do know he’s just come out in support of Ron Paul, mainly because he too is against the atrocious carnage the US Empire has caused in its disastrous conquest of Iraq:
Ron Paul For The Republican Nomination
And hey, Dale, can I get some of that stuff you’re smoking? To realistically suggest that a US Presidential candidate should answer the question, “What do you think about Global Warming?”, with the answer, “No Comment – It matters less than the Superbowl”, is a high plane of Platonic perfection I too would like to attain.
Andrew Sullivan is like the AA devotee who denounces you as an alcoholic for having a beer with supper in the assumption that you, too, must secretly be pouring vodka on your cornflakes. A more uncritical and simpering supporter of Bush and his War on Terror one could not hope to find than Sully 5 years ago and then, suddenly, on making the Einsteinian discovery that Bush is a) a bit thick and b) a big spender, Sully decides to spew his righteous zeal all over those of us who persist in pointing out that the anti-war movment is comprised not of great patriots, but the offal of the world and resist the apellation “Christian Socialist” on the not unreasonable grounds that it’s innacurate.
So, speaking as someone who was a far more reluctant and pessimistic supporter of the U.S. Empire’s carnage filled conquest of Iraq, “moron” is certainly not innacurate to describe a someone with such a comic lack of self-awareness and I do not think it would be going a bit too far to call a man so devoted to slander a bad person, but mad as a box of frogs is probably what I’d call him before anything else.
Perhaps you’re right. Chomsky at least tries to find reputable sources for as many his critiques as possible, Ron Paul just makes up crap off the top of his head about giving people gas.
Is Ron Paul really raising money for his US presidential campaign in Belfast, Ireland??
Is giving money to US presidential campaings common practice in other countries? Because I have never even seen an ad boosting a Prime Minister (for example) over here in Seattle.
Does the rest of the world actually care that much about who gets elected President?
I suppose abolishing the Departments of education and energy, abolishing the IRS and FED, and so on, are chomskyite too?
Of course, all candidates have opinions about everything, and are eager to share with us. If they forgot something they’ll put a staffer to dig up latest polls, and will come up with a position.
But you can learn about them by the crap they utter, like Paul Marks did above.
I used to vote for the Bipartisans’ candidates, sometimes in preference to LPers (although only early on did I waste my vote on the lesser of two evils; newsbimboes have an incentive to make races seem closer than they are — and besides, it is the Bipartisans who’ve been avoiding a preferential voting system, such as IRV, keeping the plurality voting system). But the US Senate’s refusal to do its duty, its decision to whitewash Clinton, making it possible for him to get away with the appearance of merely having lied about sex, rather than having engaged in mafioso-like activity — where not even one Senator signed into the evidence room — was the last straw for me.
I doubt that I’d make an exception for Ron Paul, unless, by some miracle, he makes a sound case for withdrawing from Iraq (and Afghanistan?).
As for any other Bipartisans, I’m no longer shunning them completely. All they have to do is publicly assent, interpreting literally or figuratively, to the following:
(1) As far as the Supreme Court’s (former?) fascist majority, which upheld McCain-Feingold; George Bush, who signed it; and every single Congresscritter who voted for it are concerned, God damn them all. (2) God damn the Supreme Court’s (former?) fascist majority for having decided that rich folks could bribe the government to steal from poor folks like Kelo. (3) God damn every single Senator who participated in the whitewash of Bill Clinton, whether they voted to convict or not.
FYI, w.r.t. Carla Howell, she’ll likely need help dealing with the ultra-ultra-sleazy Massachusetts Teachers Association this time, to defend the initiative to repeal the MA income tax, so that it makes the ballot.
Barry Goldwater’s(Link) son has endorsed Ron Paul. More evil ‘scum’ for Gabriel and associated morons to denounce!
Given that Dale Amon’s by-line contains the following:
(Belfast, Northern Ireland/Laramie, Wy)
…I think it’s a safe bet that Dale is an ex-pat American.
Gabriel, catch a clue: that ugly folks support Paul for one reason or another no more makes Paul one of them than the fact that Goldwater picked up a huge chunk of Dixiecrat votes made him the bigot that he was oh-so-committedly not.
What you’re positing doesn’t even have enough fibre to be called a straw man.
Well, probably whatever chimerical anarcho-socialist blueprint Chomsky favours this week would entail the abolition of all of the above, but that is hardly the point. I was referring to Ron Paul’s musings on foreign policy and international relations, which are plainly alien to the isolationist tradition (wrong, anway) and in keeping with that of the radical left (adopted by Rothbardians in the ’60s) whose foremost expositor over the past few decades has been Chomsky.
The reason why this matters is because Ron Paul is not running as the Libertarian candidate who is anti-war he is running as the anti-war candidate who happens to be a Libertarian. He, not I, has chosen to spend his campaign harping on the malignities of America’s international role, whilst saying as little as possible about taxes and welfare.
Barry Goldwater, by contrast, ran on an anti big government programme and happened to pick up some (though by no means all) of the Dixiecrat vote, whose interests collided with his. First, Goldwater was one hell of a human being wheras Ron Paul is either devoid of all morals or has no clue what exactly his campaign managers have been getting up too for the past few months. Goldwater would never have appeared on Alex Jones’ radio show and that’s a fact. Secondly, certain features of Goldwater’s ethnic background made him anathema to the people who make up the bulk of Paul’s active support base.
If I was trying to make excuses for the muck that is Rothbardian Libertertarianism and the Ron Paul campaign, I wouldn’t bring up Goldwater – a perfect example, if ever there was one, of how much better things used to be.
The tragedy is that two Libertarians ran for the Repub nomionation this time around. The good one was ignored, whislt the other has gained a measure of popularity by associating with Communists, Nazis and worse and in so doing has bewitched the perpetually credulous section of the Libertarian Right. Most grotesque of all is that whil Paul parrots a hyperbolic version of the anti-war bilge one can hear from the Mainsteam Media 24/7 you somehow think he is being radical.
If you support a war that has been a $700 billion boondoggle, whining about taxes and spending seems a bit rich. People like you are as much to blame for why spending and taxes are so high s welfarists are.
And fuck off with your whining that a few nazis and commies support Paul. The Stormfront people supported Bush in 2000 (Link)and a fair few commies, like Christopher Hitchens, are Bush supporters. You weren’t whining then about that were you?
Are you saying this because you believe the role of the press is just to act as propaganda organs of the state?
Yes, this is exactly what I’m saying. I am, in fact, Bismarck risen from the grave to stop the Ron Paul Revolution in its tracks. I could not possibly have been making the point that Ron Paul regurgitates the viewpoint of the media establishment in a peculiarly garbled and excitable manner whilst posing as a renegade outsider
Spare me all that blather. The Murdoch media are still hot for the war. If they aren’t mainstream, I don’t know what the fuck is. And there are other media outlets you can get nonstop arsekissing of the Bush administration if that is what you crave.
I have endeavored, but have not been able to figure out Gabriel’s logic. [red flag pointing to the troll column]
Ron “abolish the IRS and give me a pay-cut” Paul has about as much in common with Noam “democratic control” Chomsky as Adam Smith does with Karl Marx.
Back to more legitimate discussion: why on earth doesn’t the sophisticated readership of this blog get the difference between ‘isolationism’ and ‘non-intervention’? Does anyone with a “critically rational individualist perspective” truly believe that US control of the Pakistani/ Saudi/ Jordanian/ Qatari/ Kuwaiti/ Iraqi governments is a good idea? How has it turned out so far? Jeez.
I can understand an antipathy for the democrat approach of ‘surrender, appease, patronize and subsidize’. But Ron Paul’s approach is the OPPOSITE: withdraw from nation-building and running other nations, and demand the world negotiate with America on American terms, not terms dictated by the UN or any other namby-pamby organization of apologists for dictatorships.
It may not be in the worlds interests to stop America subsidizing Europe and Japan’s defence, but Ron Paul doesn’t give a crap! He care’s about whats in AMERICA’s best interests, and good for him!
The American free lunch for the rest of the world is about to stop, and I can’t wait.
Bring the tone down folks. Remember. We do not allow ad hominum attacks here. If you can’t say it without calling each other names then you have nothing at all worth saying.
And remember. I am one of the editors of this publication and I can and will enforce decorum.
Enough said.
Is it worse than Ad Hominum when you cannot even find personal failings in the candidate, and have to resort to attacking a few silly supporters of the candidate? It seems so to me!
As for “the bulk of Paul’s active support base”, you should show up at one of our meetings. You’d be surprised.
There are lots of people who care deeply about economics and freedom.
There are many people who feel sincerely that the American government exists for the benefit of Americans, and not to be sugar daddy or policeman to the world.
There are a couple of kooks who entertain us with “building 7” blather.
But I have yet to run across anybody who admitted to caring about anybody’s ethnic background. Perhaps out of the Ron Paul supporters I have met, there is one who is a closet racist. But I doubt it. Individualism precludes racism.
Yes, we got an endorsement from a pretty nasty group. It cost them nothing. They do not show up for our meetups. They do not participate. They would not be welcome among us if they did show up.
Sorry to bust your bubble.
Completely false. This is what Pat Buchanan might say, but this is plainly not what Ron Paul has been saying and is a million miles from what his supporters at anti-war rallies are chanting. It’s all there for you to hear if only you would take the fingers from out of your ears.
The links between Adam Smiths’ theory of value and Marxism is a long established trope of scholarship, but I’ll let that pass. Again, I was talking about Ron Paul’s analysis of International Relations and U.S. Foreign Policy, which has departed from the any right-wing non-interventionist tradition and is plainly of a Chomskyite nature.
For an illustration of how bad things have got in some sections of Libertarianism I refer you straight to the horse’s mouth
“If you vote for Ron Paul in spite of the kind of scum he has chosen to represent, then you’re either a bad person or a moron, end of story.”
Gabriel, I don’t care how bad things are in some areas of Libertarianland… because L-land has been awful since about 1982. I’m concerned with your words.
You have smeared everybody who’s going after a return to constitutional government as bigots, etc., because some bigots happen to be pro-RP. Well, let me tell you, when I worked in an investment bank, I worked with a whole lot of very similar bigots, and they all voted mainstream parties when they weren’t busy trying to lock everybody with a Spanish last name out of the decent areas of the Austin MSA real-estate market. Who’s worse?
which has departed from the any right-wing non-interventionist tradition
Um, Gabriel? Since when has the “right wing” been anti-interventionist? Modern-day “conservatives” give lip-service to anti-interventionism, etcetera, specifcially because of Goldwater and Reagan. That’s why they call it the “Reagan coalition” of libertarians and conservatives. Before that, the left-wing folks had that libertarian vote, and they called it the “New Left.”
Here’s an url(Link) that will explain America’s actual ideological divide for you: Liberty, Equality, and Order go as far back as the Declaration of Independence, where it’s stated pretty darned explictly.
Check it out. It’s worth the read, and might help explode some of this “left” and “right” nonsense.
Gabriel, then I think you can understand why I specifically chose that comparison. In spite of the links that you mention, nobody with even the minimum understanding of both schools of thought would seek to equate them in either means or ends.
I didn’t claim rightwing=anti-interventionist, I just said that there is an anti-interventionist (in foreign policy matters) right wing tradition – just as there is an interventionist one – exemplified by people like Pat Buchanan, but that Ron Paul’s pronouncements and those of his followers who he has not dissociated himself from have clearly taken him outside of said tradition and into one best placed within a particularly nasty strain of the Left.
It’s not that nasty people support Ron Paul, I’m sure every candidate has undesirable supporters. However, only one candidate has gone out of his way to associate himself with the 9/11 truth movement et al. and only one candidate (with the possible exception of Kucinich) has them as his core support base.
But here’s RP advocating dis-engagement and withdrawl based on the ‘best’ possible strategy – i.e. non-interventionism with a big stick – and I have no qualms about abandoning my earlier support for W and jumping ship to RP. Why can’t the other guys?
-Rahul
Two big reasons, in my case.
First, deterrence only works if the party you are trying to deter is rational. I do not think a significant portion of the jihadis are rational. Thus, ‘non-interventionism with a big stick’ would be effective with, say, the Russians or the Chinese, but I don’t think it will work with the jihadis.
Second, I think that the US’s current network of alliances and deployed forces deters a great many bastards who would otherwise be inclined to try for full-blown assholedom. I do not consider this desirable, and I have no confidence in the locals of wherever resolving their differences peaceably due to their history of failure to do so. In Ron Paul’s view of the world, it is not America’s problem if a bunch of foreigners kill each other en masse. I disagree- our economy, upon which our prosperity depends, has become so intertwined with overseas markets and producers that a war between pretty much any two industrialized nations will have repercussions in America.
So I can’t support Ron Paul. I do like some of what he’s saying- small government, respect for the constitution, etc… but other things he says give me the creeps (the gold standard, playing along with the truthers, etc- that’s conspiracy-theory loony-land, don’t go there).
My main worry about Ron Paul is that his good ideas may become tainted by the nutty stuff and make other candidates reluctant to adopt them.
—–
Still, it should serve as a wakeup call to the rest of the world. Hello? The US has a semi-popular candidate who is dead set on isolationism. Do you REALLY want that?
-TWG
It is inaccurate to describe Ron Paul as an isolationist. For the non-Americans in the audience, ‘non-interventionism with a big stick’ is basically the new way of saying ‘more rubble, less trouble’.
Mine too.