Republican Presidential Candidate Ron Paul seems to have attracted a lot of attention with his big fund-raising day, although Mark Steyn says that although he now has money his poll rating is still very low. If you don’t know what he looks and sounds like, watch him being interviewed by Jay Leno.
The most interesting thing I have encountered about Ron Paul is this, from Jonathan Wilde:
On the heels of the big fundraising day, I’ve noticed that a lot of people I know are declaring themselves Ron Paul supporters. Many of them are not just not libertarian. If anything, they’re big government advocates. They justify their support with vague statements like, “He’s shifting the landscape” or “The system needs to be shaken up”. I don’t think they have any idea what Paul actually stands for.
Maybe they will learn. I have long thought thought a way for libertarianism to spread will be when people get that it is a different sort of mischief they can make to the usual kind. This was surely the appeal of Marxism, while it had appeal. Now, the world is still full of Marxists but they keep quiet about it, and wrap it up as other things, like Greenery. Where’s the mischief in that? That won’t shake up the system. That is the system. But libertarianism is a kind of mischief making that dares to speak its name, and if done, would cause serious embarrassment to thousands of politicians and lobbyists and subsidy guzzlers.
Of course, much of Paul’s appeal is that he is mounting a non-left attack on US military involvement abroad. But if many are backing him because of that, they may also become acquainted with the notion that maybe seriously cutting back big government is something that a decent man could genuinely want to do. Paul wants to cut government spending on foreign wars, and rather than blowing what is ‘saved’ on schools and hospitals and other foolishnesses, he says: let the citizens keep their money.
I presume that Ron Paul has lots of domestic personal policy positions concerning how to get there from here, so to speak, as any serious political candidate must. I do know, because he said this to Leno, that he wants to phase out welfare addiction very gradually, rather than just cold turkey it, for example. But that makes sense (‘cold turkeying’ it might also make sense, I think, but what do I know?)
I think that if you asked Ron Paul why he wouldn’t just take the cold turkey approach to cutting off (say) Social Security, he’d describe it as part of the national debt. Even though that debt may have been assumed unconstitutionally, it’s still a debt that must be paid.
-jcr
Hmmm. Dont know about Dr Paul yet.
That’s the first time I’ve seen him and perhaps Jay Leno asking the questions isn’t the best introduction.
First impressions.
Too old and to amiable. I would like to hear his views on American involvement in WW1 & 2, because he sure sounds like an isolationist to me.
I like his economics though.
I also followed some links to “the shocking video that Hillary does not want you to see” and was unsurprised to find that the Clintons have had their fingers in the cookie jar again!
That woman being President is one of my worst nightmares!
But I dont see Ron Paul beating her. The American political machine will chew him up and spit him out. The Statist rot has gone too far already.
It will take 20 years or more of crisis and economic collapse for a guy like Paul to win. By which time it may already be too late.
If anyone thinks that a catastrophe of any kind, economic or otherwise, would lead to a demand for less government, they are seriously mistaken.
Crisis will only bring calls for more state action, not less.
The conditions which might lead to a real opportunity to roll back some of the growth in state power and control are continuing economic growth and rising prosperity on a world wide basis.
It is the growth of an educated, enterpenurial middle class that drives the demand for open social and economic systems, not a frightened and impoverished populace terrified by economic and political collapse.
I can’t think of anything more self defeating than having the advocates for a smaller, less intrusive state go around talking about how desirable it would be to have a social/economic collapse, with the immense suffering and loss of life that would entail.
Only the comical lunacy of the official Libertarian party in the US could begin to match the negative effects of such a philosophy, which, of course, they have done for many years.
Pray for good times. The demagogue and fledgling tyrant hope for disaster. Prosperity is their worst enemy, and the best friend of liberty.
Unfortunately, his campaign is also attracting cranks of all sorts (including conspiracy theorists and racists), so I worry that it may have the opposite effect from what you’re describing. It may well make libertarians seem like cooks. Dr. Paul pushing the gold standard doesn’t help much, unfortunately.
Unless they are of the George Soros-Al Gore type,
which many, many, far too many are. Like Shai Agassi
The first thing Shai Agassi did when he started his new “vision” was to ask for a grant of $600 million from the government of Israel.
Amen.
While I was in the USA the other week I watched (some of) that mammoth Republican debate (there’s a limit to how long I can stand listening to politicians).
Ron Paul stood out as potentially a very good thing for the US as, for straight talking, did Fred Thompson.
Can’t say that I was particularly enamoured of the others, though, and Mr Guiliani came off as a bit of a weasel when asked about a constitutional amendment against gay marriage.
Still, Anybody But Hillary!
I disagree veryretired, it was severe crisis that lead to Thatcher… it may take severe crisis to lead to someone who can take what she did and move it forward.
it may take severe crisis to lead to someone who can take what she did and move it forward
And as soon as the crisis goes away it all starts again. Besides, government spending grew inexorably even under her. Thatcher may have privatised commercial activities, but nanny just kept growing even under her.
Who, in good times, advocates fewer sweeties from government?
It’s not a case of praying for anything one way or the other, but of looking at the world around you, drawing your own conclusions and preparing accordingly.
There are plenty of technical, as well as fundamental, reasons to think that much of the world is slipping silently into a monster bear market. There are today massive and unsustainable levels of corporate (derivatives?) and personal debt (leverage-financed housing market speculation and consumption?) that will never be paid back. The only way this can unwind is through the credit deflation process that has already begun, the so-called credit crunch.
Such periods have always previously been associated with recession/depression. Governments starved of tax receipts cannot then afford previous levels of largesse.
However, one of the consequences of the great depression in 1930s America was ultimately the New Deal i.e. increased socialism.
Ron Paul is going nowhere.
The point that properity and growth will enventually lead to smaller government is well taken. It may be that better technology will make socialized medicine a thing of the past. I think it was someone on samizdata who pointed out that in the 19th and early 20th century improvements in health were due to better drains and mass innoculations, inherently big government operations.
In the 21st century medical improvements will be adapted to individuals, such as focused DNA repair treatments and other types of nanomedicine. Already medical information technology is making it easier for patients to free themselves from the doctor/hospital/medical records establishment.
Technology is a two edged sword, but on the whole the trend is away from big government. The longer it continues the weaker central governments will get, at least it will if God really is a libertarian.
I’m no fan of Ron Paul, due to his isolationism. Nevertheless he is doing a lot towards spreading libertarian ideas, and that’s good. Maybe in 50 or 100 years we’ll have a libertarian candidate with chances to win…
I don’t know about that. He comes across as a loon, even before one hears what he has to say – not a good thing. But maybe it’s just me.
Alisa–it’s not just you. “Even before one hears what he has to say.”
What veryretired said.
Also quoting vr:
Doesn’t sound like anyone I know. — Anyone heard Al lately??
I’m convinced by the theory that the polls are underestimating him. In particular:
(1) They’re polling established republicans, who are probably the last few grimly determined neocons, while Ron Paul is growing the libertarian side of the brand into fresh Democrat and Independent territory.
(2) They’re polling only landline phones, beloved of the elderly – many more young people in the USA than in Britain have only mobile and VOIP phones. RP’s support demographic leans young and internet savvy.
(3) They’re wildly underestimating the demonstrated propensity of his supporters to actually turn up and vote, even in the most insignificant pre-polling. So far Paulites have aced a majority of straw polls and placed in nearly all of them.
Ron Paul is not an isolationist. He doesn’t believe in America withdrawing from the world. He believes in free trade and supports the United States’ involvement in the world, he just doesn’t believe in un-Constitutionally projecting its military power all throughout the world and thereby stirring up ill will against America, bankrupting the treasury, needlessly spilling American blood, and using perpetual warfare to continue to erode its citizens’ civil liberties (just “temporarily” of course) because of the war (a statist tactic described very well by your Orwell in 1984).
And as for his ability to win the general election… I think he stands a much better chance of beating Hillary than any of the other GOP candidates. Giuliani won’t turn out the GOP base… he’d lose. Romney’d lose because he’s a Mormon. Half the rest of them would lose because they look too much like Bush, and this election is going to be a referendum on Bush’s presidency. Ron Paul can energize the Republican base, get the votes of young people (who traditionally don’t turn out to vote), capture the votes of anti-war folks who hate Hillary’s more hawkish stand, and appeal to independents who like that he’s honest, straightforward, doesn’t simply toe the party line, and will work to introduce real change in our government.
Ron Paul is very popular among 9/11 truthers, neo-nazis and 40 year old singleton computer programmers.
Among other people … not so much.
These two facts may not be entirely unrelated. Think about it a while.
I’m afraid I have no interest whatever in debating about Ron Paul. He is this coming election’s Ross Perot or Ralph Nader, (if he runs as a third party candidate), i.e., a spoiler who will take votes from one canididate more than the other and therefore influence the outcome even though he has no chance of being elected.
Perry, I was referring specifically to the comment regarding “economic collapse”, not that any and all bad times are automatically followed by a statist surge.
After all, Reagan was elected very largely in response to the lunacies of the Nixon/Ford/Carter 70’s, with its previously unheard of combination of both recession and inflation. (Not to mention as an antidote to the Carterian “malaise”, surely one of the oddest moments in American political history.)
My main point was that prosperous, educated, middle and upper middle class people who work hard, and expect rewards for themselves and their families, become a powerful force demanding continued opportunity and economic development.
If they see the chances for progress for themselves and their children drying up, as happened in the 70’s, for a recent example, they are willing and able to respond to a basic conversation concerning what the problems are, and what solutions are available.
It is a part of statist mythology that ordinary citizens are boobs and fools who must be led around by their betters, and cared for and protected like foolish children.
And yet, these are the very men and women who have created, and are managing day after day, year after year, a multi-trillion dollar world wide economic and social entity that has produced scientific, technical, and medical advances that were undreamed of for all the millenia of human history.
It is not an impossible task to speak frankly to such people and help them to see for themselves that the relentless message they have been bombarded with since birth—that the state is more qualified and better situated to make extremely complex economic and cultural decisions than any other element of society—is utter baloney.
It is their intelligience, and exposure to the follies of states around the globe, that works most strongly in favor of their accepting the simple and obvious argument that political office occupiers, notoriously corrupt and incompetent around the world as well as here at home, are the last people any rational human being would believe were capable of operating and maintaining a complex world-wide economic and social entity such as the civilization of the modern world has become.
It is the mystique of the political that has enthralled men for the last century, as before the myths of the aristocracy or religion or the warrior king were used to justify stifling and controlling the efforts and ingenuities of the productive, working men and women who were carrying all the rest on their backs, like elephants burdened with gaudy pavillions loaded with utterly worthless nobles and maharajahs on an outing.
What needs to be done, every day and in every situation, is for those who honor the nobility of productive individuals, and revere their freedoms and liberties, to remind those very people that every mouthful of food, every stitch of clothing, every dose of medicine, every major and minor improvement in their lives and well being was provided by the efforts of people just like them, not pontificating pols who have never produced anything except greenhouse gasses.
The coming generations have endured the emptiness of a state mandated education, have seen with their own eyes the incompetencies and corruptions rampant in statist entities all around them, and, very importantly, can now share the struggles and occasional triumphs of those striving to live in free societies from around the world via the instantaneous flow of information available from computer and satelite networks around the world.
It is instructive that interrupting and preventing this informational flow is now a very high priority of the despotic regimes around the world. Just as they tried previously to censor and control books or radio programs, movies and TV, now they desparately seek ways to stop the sharing of data possible on the internet or by satelite broadcasting and telephone systems.
My children, and grandchildren, will face moral issues, many of them with economic or political/social components of extreme complexity, previously unknown to any other generations of humanity. The medical and technological advances of the last few decades make that inevitable.
It is imperative that a sensible case be made and presented to them which provides an alternative to the 19th century myths of the omniscient, and beneficent, state which resulted in the catastrophic growth of totalitarian monstrosities in the 20th century.
To paraphrase a picture once created by Gen MacArthur when he described the role of duty for the soldierly class, if we fail to carry out this fundamental task, the ghosts of those millions who were consumed in the maws of political infernoes around the world will rise up and point their shrivelled fingers at us, demanding constancy and courage.
This case will not be made by, nor resonate with, fearful and timid souls whose only concern is political power achieved at any cost.
The reality of the creative power of free men and women is their enemy. They hate and fear it as a vampire fears and avoids the sun.
The future belongs to the children of the light, for whom the universe and its many marvels are an exhilerating challenge to be overcome, and for whom the creative genius of humanity is an ally and a friend, not a threat.
Someday, my great-great grandchildren will walk among the stars, as this old fool has only been able to dream of doing. What craven little statist will be able to stop those who would conquer the galaxy, just for the adventure of doing so?
Someone needs to explain to me the benefit in having a deranged half-bright Texan siphoning enough votes off of a mediocre Republican to elect a Clinton.
I can’t shake the feeling that we’ve been here before.
(And for the troofers: Why did Ron Paul lie about the origins of Iraq’s chemical weapons? I can never seem to get a straight answer to that one.)
I haven’t seen Ron Paul, neither in person, nor on TV, I have only read some speeches of his, and magazine interviews.
He is not much more of a loon thatn most libertarians (me included).
Whatever the Iraq intervention is, it’s NOT unconstitutional. (Not that it matters so much).
This claim of “unconstitutional” is a good example of why Ron Paul is called “a loon”.
I am not a gold bug, but given that gold is at the highest level for almost 30 years, and the dollar is falling faster than a whore’s drawers, I’d say that Dr Paul’s support for a return to real money based on actual rea-world assets rather than the fiction of fiat money is not as bonkers as some might claim. In the light of the clusterfuck of monetary policy errors perpetrated by Alan Greenspan and the usual stage-army of the Great and The Good, Ron Paul’s analysis holds up pretty well, in fact.
Jacob: look him up on Youtube, and tell me what you think then.
Libertarianism comes across as the party of reducto ad absurdum , taking otherwise perfectly good ideas and running them off the cliff of silliness.
That said, I note that the basic ideas are quite good, in general.
Let us suppose, for a moment, that it’s 2009, and I (conservative, with libertarian leanings) have been elected president. Dr. Paul would immediately be included in my cabinet as a floating department head. I could start by appointing him head of the Department of Education, and give him marching orders to reduce it to a small committee on standards, department funding to be refunded to the taxpayers. Next, the department of Energy, etc, etc. I think he’d make a useful hatchet man for anyone really serious about trimming the government.
RE: Ron Paul being an isolationist
I generally follow the recommendation to not ascribe to malice that which is explained by stupidity, but the persistent twisting of words regarding Ron Paul gives me pause. Ron Paul is a non interventionist and this differs greatly from an isolationist. The former simply minds their own business (which is a full-time job for most, including nations) where the latter builds walls around the cave they hide in. Please, people, the English language has wonderful implicit precision so using it as a blunt instrument serves no one.
…sorry about the crud: messed up the tags a little.
Ron Paul has always opposed the trade treaties – his argument is that the United States government should simply say “anyone can buy whatever goods or services they like from other parts of the world, without at tax or other restriction” and so has no need of NAFTA, CAFTA and so on.
However, this does mean that he votes on the same side as the Democrats (and protectionist Republicans) on such treaties – and that appeals to some leftist activists.
Also, over the last year Ron Paul has been voting for a lot of domestic spending – not just pork for his District (nearly everyone votes for stuff for their own area), but stuff as far away as San Francisco.
I doubt that he has made any deliberate plan to get leftists to support him (he does not strike me as the sort of man who makes plans of this type), but some of his staff may have made such connections.
Perhaps the same staff who fed him such things as “we gave him the gas” in relation to Saddam.
When the policy of “left and right join hands” has been followed in the past the left ends up in charge (they are simply better at plotting and deceit than libertarains are – indeed such committee and back room stuff is their greatest strength).
He who touches pitch is defiled, even if this was no part of his intention.
And Moveon.org and the DailyKos are certainly pitch of this type.
While Paul Marks is somewhat correct, he fails to point out what the result has been of the ‘alliance’ between conservatives and libertarians in the US. The neocons, the religious fundamentalists, the Ann Coulter style morons, and the ‘national greatness’ statists have clearly dominated everything. They have despicable attitudes towards civil liberties, seem to favour bigger government than the liberals, and have gone completely mashuggah for nationbuilding (a policy they once derided as leftists).
W.E. Messamore,
So, why did Ron Paul lie about the gas?
Far more important:
Why did GW Bush and the other wizards and zanies that brought about the war lie about the WMD?
Well I suppose it wasn’t a sequiter so non-sequiter is not an innacurate description per se., though I can’t say I’ve ever seen the word used that way.
Any movement may have fringe weirdos, but not every one has them as the bedrock of their support. I may not care much for the Federal Reserve, but I care even less for myself and my family being sent to gas chambers and the fact that Ron Paul’s most dedicated supporters rather take issue with me on this one on top of the fact that he refuses to disassociate himself from them despite repeated opportunties puts me off.
Now I personally don’t matter much (since you asked, I’m British, Ron Paul has a lot of support here too – we’re not exactly devoid of holocaust deniers and computer geeks ourselves), but millions upon millions of people who agree with me do. Again, I may think that Ron Paul supporters are, to a man, despicable or stupid and that’s no biggie, but most Americans think you’re a bunch of jokes and that is.
The average Ron Paul fan
Eww.
Cynic – Ann Coulter may be many things but “moron” is not one of them. Of course technically you did not say the lady was a moron, you said “type” – so you may have meant someone who styles themsleves on Ann Coulter.
The problem with that is that of no such people – Ann Coulter (both the good and the bad about this person) is one of a kind.
As for religious “fundementalists” – some of them support civil liberties and some do not.
Most of the Christian ones do support civil liberties – unless by “civil liberties” you mean abortion and so on.
Cynic,
Did he actually lie[1]? Also, I’ll point out that the goofy prick isn’t running for office next year.
Ron Paul claimed that the US armed Saddam Hussein (almost entirely false) and that the US provided chemical weapons to Hussein (entirely false.) The untruthfulness of these two statements has been out in public for over a decade. Even an idiot egomaniac from Texas should have seen them by now.
Therefore, it is highly unlikely that Ron Paul avoided knowing the truth. And yet, he said what he said.
So, is he merely irretrievably stupid, or did he lie? And since he claims to be smart enough to be a physician, WHY DID HE LIE?
[1] “Lie” has a definition. It means to make a false statement, knowing that statement to be false.
It’s about time the idiots and the one issue voters start working for our side for once.
Do I agree with EVERYTHING Ron Paul stands for? No.
Is a he bit unpolished? Yes. But who wants another President that squints at the camera every five seconds as some sort of charming affectation (Bush) or bites his lower lip and says “I feel your pain” (Clinton I)?
Do even I find his statements on our presence in the middle east a bit abrasive? Yes (and this from a person who has always seen a convenience of targets chosen versus those not). But, he is the ONLY candidate who sees the results of decades of socialism – external use of force, the joined-at-the-hip nature of Welfare and Warfare. Functionally is is an anti-imperialist, a main plank of the Old Right philosophy. Once upon a time it wasn’t loony to see that external use of force should be extremely well examined before use. Post WWII with its cultural upheaval, most in the US believe that we should be the world’s policeman. Before that it was relatively rare.
At the end of the day, I either vote for Ron Paul or I don’t vote at all. I’m going to drink the 1984 Kool-Aid that voting for ANY other Republican is better than Clinton II or Obama. We’re well past such tiny gradations between the two parties.
As for libertarians coming off as loony or holding “absurd” views, there is nothing more absurd than a financial statement such as the Financial Report of the United States Government that shows a $50,000,000,000,000 accrual basis debt and everyone just keeps whistling past the graveyard. NOTHING is as absurd as this other than perhaps that MORE socialism is seen as the answer. There is NOTHING so absurd as the commonly held belief that “well, we have to DO something” to mean the majority sitting on their brains while bureaucrats carve out a handsome salary and benefits and accomplish nothing. If it is absurd to point ones finger and say “that’s fucking crazy, open up your goddamned eyes, shake off your socialist brainwashing, and see what the fuck is going on”, then happily I am absurd. I’m a loony as Daffy-fucking-Duck.
We are on the cusp of the avalanche of unfunded mandates and promises falling directly on top of us. We are fighting wars with the prospect for more. We’ve got Green Philosophy ready to contract the economy that the increased taxation to pay for the above mandates doesn’t already do, we’ve got a State run system of “education” that outputs economic illiterates, we’ve got a prison population bursting at the seams, we imprison people for “shady” private schemes while if the SAME THING is done by the pols/government bureaucrats it’s sound public policy, and the list goes on. If demanding CONSISTENT logic and an abeyance of Force (domestic and foreign) except for direct harm on life and property is loony and absurd, it’s a damn shame that it is now so, because just a few generations ago it was the common perspective. The socialists indeed have won.
Brad, I am only commenting because it was me who used the word “loon” on this thread: I did not use it regarding Ron Paul’s views (with which I am only partly familiar), but regarding his personality, more precisely manner of speech and body language. And no, I don’t find squinting and lip-biting any more appealing.
Gabriel, your criticisms are way off-base and unrelated to or derived from reality. To claim that Ron Paul’s most dedicated supporters want to or at least wouldn’t mind killing you and your family in a gas chamber makes you sound like the paranoid whack-job that you are accusing Dr. Paul of being. It makes you look just as out of touch with reality as you claim that he is.
I’m active in the Ron Paul campaign here in Middle America. I constantly see and interact with Ron Paul supporters. I’m here on the ground seeing it happen first hand. I promise you that they don’t sit around at their meetings wearing tin-foil hats and cursing the Jews. They’re generally good, hard-working people who love freedom and the Constitution and love a candidate who champions freedom and the Constitution. It’s as simple as that. Quit trying to make it what it’s not.
…and surely you concede that it hurts your case at least a little that as I said before, the US military, both retired and active duty, has donated more to Ron Paul’s campaign than to any other 2008 presidential candidate? Surely you wouldn’t call the troops neo-Nazis and 9-11 truthers?
Sunfish, Ron Paul doesn’t claim to be smart enough to be a physician, he is a physician who’s delivered thousands of babies. He’s not an idiot or an egomaniac. You may disagree with his policies and political beliefs, hell- he may even just rub you the wrong way, but name-calling is petty.
As for the US supporting, funding, and arming Iraq during its war with Iran, are you kidding me? You act like it’s an established fact that we did not, when it’s really more like an established fact that we did. I don’t know where you’re getting your (mis)information, but it’s false. Ron Paul is not a liar, you just disagree with him, and your position seems dubious to me.
Messa,
Here you show us clearly what the problem is:
That’s false. US support of Iraq was minimal, Iraq was Russia’s client, and they had only Russian armaments. I don’t think you or Ron Paul are lying, rather it’s ignorance of foreign matters. Ignorance pushed with pathos and zeal to make a point, to spin an issue. And even if the US did support Iraq in the 1980ies, it’s irrelevant to the Iraq war of 2003.
That’s one thing that puts me off – Ron Paul should know better, it’s not hard to learn.
Same about the “unconstitutional” claim. That’s ridiculous. The Senate passed a resolution by a big bi-partisan majority. Ron Paul’s claim about it’s inappropriate wording is not serious, and argued with much overzealousness.
I think Ron Paul is, in general, a good libertarian, and a good person, but he has glaring weaknesses. Of course, all other candidates have them too.
It would be easy for Congressman Ron Paul to deal with this stuff.
He could fire the staff who feed him lies like “we gave him the gas” about Saddam.
He could fire the staff who send his articles to antisemitic journals (not just “anti Zionist” these publications hate Jews in the United States also).
He could say “go away you lunatics” to the 9/11 “truthers” who follow him about waving banners in his support.
But Ron Paul does none of the above.
Why not?
Now there’s this:
Another crowd he could keep his diatance from.
Well the very computer active supporters of Ron Paul have had four days to answer my question and have not done so.
Their failure to answer (when they are otherwise so willing to speak) speaks louder than any answer they could give.