Posted on 12/06/2009 9:15:17 AM PST by Anarchydeluxe
As a former conservative turned free-market libertarian, I have always been intrigued by Ron Paul's strong advocacy for the free market. After all, conservatives claim to stand on the same principles. So, I found it quite odd during the Republican presidential debates of 2008 when all of the other candidates actually had answers for how they would better "run" the economy. Having lived in Russia, China, and Europe, each candidate's answer scared me to death. Had they somehow missed the memo about how planning economies doesn't work, has never worked, and never will work? Cold War, anybody? The proper answer should have been that no president can or should try to "run" the economy, which Paul thankfully pointed out. It was at that moment, combined with hearing a Republican presidential candidate bash the free market and greed on Wall Street (failing to mention, of course, the government's own role in that) and watching George W. Bush abandon any pretense of a free market ideology, that I had a revelation about the modern Republican Party. Paul was the only true free-market representative on the Republican stage, and other Republicans viewed him as a threat. Fox News certainly treated him like a joke. But why? And what happened to the Republican Party, the natural home of free-market principles?
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Incorrect. I was not shown it was false. I was simply given an unsubstantiated opinion on the Internet. I gave an opinion, also unsubstantiated.
It is a standard Internet tactic to reply to an opinion by saying it’s not correct and then demanding scientific proof. I will not step into that trap. I have no desire to do so, and I’m not stupid enough to do so.
The next step, of course, is ad hominem attacks.
My copy of the Constitution says that only Congress has the authority to declare war.
None seceded before Buchanan was elected.
Only congress can declare war, but the president still has a duty to protect America against those who want to hurt it. Something cut and run would never do.
Of course. The trouble is that there are legitimate arguments opposing the war in Iraq. Demonizing Paul for disagreeing with most conservatives doesn’t help. It may well be that the Fed is a greater threat to the freedom of American citizens than Sadam ever was.
The idea of auditing the Fed may be good, but the timing now would be terrible. Obama would use any malfeasance to grab even more assets for the government.
Obama would use any malfeasance to grab even more assets for the government.
That’s okay. By the time anything could happen, Obama will be a sad note in history and the process would flush a pile of scum out into daylight.
Lincoln elected: November 1860
First state to secede (South Carolina): December 1860
Lincoln inaugurated March, 1861
Simply put, had Breckinridge won in 1860, no southern state would have left.
Paul’s argument is that Lincoln dodn’t need to fight a war to save the Union, he just needed to compensate the slave states for the emancipation of the slaves. By the time Lincoln was inaugurated, he didn’t have that choice. In the context of this discussion , everything you have said is irrelevant. Pay attention , newby.
PaleoPaulie will obsess over granting letters of marque and reprisal to the Bloods and the Crips while shutting down that awful and nonpaleo military which just keeps fighting our nation's enemies in spite of passionate Paulistinian preferences for automatic surrender to our enemies, examining his navel over his hallucinations as to whether lighthouses or federal highways can possibly be what he mistakes for "constitutional," and going on autosmooch for Islamofascist butt. Baghdad Bob would be his Press Secretary. Ramsay Clark would be his Secretary of State. Weepy Walter Jones (R?-Outer Limits, NC) would be the head of a new federal department of weeping and flapdoodle. The Secretary of "Defense" would be Cindy Sheehan. Keeping and bearing testosterone by a Cabinet Secretary would be a federal felony. Did you notice that the paleobirdbrain was soooooooo dedicated to localism that he refused to sign a Congressional amicus curiae brief to SCOTUS that urged SCOTUS to overthrow Richie Daley's pet gun control legislation disarming all but Chicago criminals IN SPITE OF THE 2ND AMENDMENT to our Constitution which paleoPaulie brazenly claims to support while doing no such thing? After 35+ years and 50+ million slaughtered babies, he claims to be pro-life while wanting to place the question in the hands of states and maybe even municipalities. He won't defend actual marriage (the kind that involves one man and one woman and no household or barnyard pets or space aliens or third parties) federally from the ravages of federal courts run amok.
Paulistinians live in an utter dream world where our nation's enemies are salivating over their intentions to snuggle us if only we let them be (rape rooms, poison gas against the Kurds, openly stated intentions to nuke Israel just for being Jews) while engaging in "free trade" with them and Ugo and Fidel and Kim Jong Mentally Ill, et al., becoming in effect their armorers just as long as we don't use our weapons against OUR enemies. Paulie thinks of the Federal Reserve as a compelling issue. Even though he may be right to seek its abolition and I think he is right on that, no one but no one wants to listen to the paleobirdbrain drone on for days on end over his faux philosophical arguments and all the technicalities. The Fed is just not a high priority item for sensible folks while we are fighting two wars and are being ruled by New Left communists like Comrade O, Bill Ayres, Bernardine Dohrn and a few dozen Marxist-Leninist "czars" appointed without so much as a by-your-leave to Senatorial confirmation.
Just what is a "conservative libertarian?" Would that be a phony like paleoPaulie who claims to be pro-life, pro-family, pro-marriage while winking to his libertoonian fans as he explains that the 10th Amendment almighty prevents him from taking any actual, well, forgive the expression, ACTION on any of those issues? No sale!
I am less interventionist than your description, could have done without the Kosovo stupidity where there were NO good guys, ANY intervention in Haiti regardless of excuse, and any action wherein we purport to be fighting under UN control of our military. Either we make the military decisions or we don't go. Either we intend (and say so from the outset) that we will settle for absolutely nothing less than total victory and the death of every significant enemy leader or we ought not to go. We can forget all the paleo and leftist fussiness about waterboarding, torturing or punching poor Islamo Ben Boodgums in the nose or belly for hanging Americans from bridges after murdering them, or any of the rest of the finely engineered anti-American whine out of the contemporary equivalent of the 1960s-70 domesticong, etc.
I understand the distinction between various forms of libertoonian critters, having in my misspent youth been a state officer of the Libertarian Party before Roe vs. Wade and their response to it helped me to grow up and shake the libertoonian dust off my boots. I practiced law for decades and am quite familiar with it, unlike most lawyers, even using it in court and in briefs. Our founding fathers were not infallible and one very major issue was the difficulty of amendment in the unforeseen circumstances of the future. It is one thing to build a substantial and impregnable wall around the First Amendment freedoms of speech, press, worship and assembly, the 2nd Amendments RTKBA, and most of the rest of the Bill of Rights and quite another to let the 9th and 10th hamstring our nation and its civilization to death (abortion, homosexuality being equated to actual marriage) or to create in the Constitution the opportunity for SCOTUS and federal courts generally to create "rights" out of whole cloth.
The Founding Fathers were not as capable or wise as the Author of Scripture. In their distant past, the Brits understood this human limitation on themselves and to this day they decline to have a written constitution. Our Founding Fathers were brave enough to write their constitutions. That it is in tatters is simply the result of the passage of 222 years and technological advances undreamed of by the founders and the normal corruption of self-interested rulers (including the likes of paleoPaulie).
I understand Ron Paul well enough when I must listen to his endless dishonesty and phoniness on public policy. No one, not even paleoPaulie, is stupid enough to regard his craven contortions as sincere.
I do not dislike Ron Paul. I DESPISE him for his nonsense about demanding the magic words "declaration of war" when a resolution authorizing the use of force will serve very well. If you have not noticed, the immediate post-WWII Demonrats ratified the UN Treaty which purports to "outlaw" war. This is especially fatal to our sovereignty in a situation where SCOTUS fans would be able to point to a case in SCOTUS in the 1930s in which SCOTUS ruled that a migratory bird treaty was of at least equal force with the constitution and, as a later enactment, prevailed over the 2nd Amendment to the extent necessary to satisfy the treaty with Canada. Personally, I regard such a decision as reflecting at the very least a major flaw in the original written constitution. Who, among the paleo-surrender artists bleating over the absence of the specific words "declare war", knew???
We have allies. Israel is one of them. They use our aid to be our outpost in the Middle East, the canary in the coal mine. Leftists despise Israel. Paleos despise Israel. Americans love and support Israel. Like it or lump it. Again, I do not dislike paleoPaulie. I despise the cowardly little paleotreasonweasel (henceforth ptw).
I have not a clue as to whether the ptw is anti-Semitic OR that he is not, but having supporters like David Duke, taking their money and not returning it when caught taking it, does not improve the ptw's reputation.
Having served as a state chairman for Ronaldus Maximus and for YAF, CRs, YRs, I would authoritatively inform you that if there are any "self-styled""conservatives" they are to be found among the paleopeacecreeps, among the constitution obsessives who think that a few reading lessons and the text makes them "experts" and act as though the constitution were as authoritative as Scripture.
I feel no sense of shame whatsoever in pointing out the truth as to paleoPaulie. Nor shall I. I know conservatism when I see it and El Run Paulie ain't it.
Well bless your heart. Feel better now?
Neo-cons are cons for sure; cons of confidence game! (hopefully soon to be cons of the Convict strain)
Paul is like Neville Chamberlain, a coward, self-delusional, utterly wrong on foreign and military policy and someone who gives not a rat's patoot about the lives and well-being of those unjustly slaughtered and oppressed. We are a nation of grown ups and not a nation of cowards like Paul and Chamberlain.
Meanwhile, no less an isolationist group of delusionals than the America First Committee grew up instantly on December 7, 1941 and folded its tent declaring solidarity with the response of Americans to retaliate for Pearl Harbor. Neither the Executive Director (John Flynn) nor the money guy Colonel McCormack nor Colonel Lindberg nor any significant leader resisted thereafter and Lindberg actually sought and belatedly received a restored commission and a role in the war.
Opposing the New Deal was a separate issue and the conservatives of that era opposed the New Deal as most of us oppose Cap and Tax and Obamacare but Chamberlain would never recover his reputation for patriotism and neither will Paul (who became paleosurrenderman AFTER the war began) nor should either.
You can call me a "NeoCon" even though I am a lifelong Catholic in my 60s. The NeoCons are a mostly dead group of mostly Jewish and ex-leftist intellectuals, the survivors nearing their 90s. I gather that "EstabliCons" are those who can be nominated for high office by actual political parties (especially the GOP). I am not running for anything nor will I but I am as likely to be nominated as paleoPaulie (namely not at all).
Not at all. My positions were adequately defended in this thread. It is your "end around" for the founding prinicples of our nation that is not defended. See C.Kirks' reponse above.
I notice the classical paleo way of avoiding the truth, the facts and knee-jerk anti-American disloyalty of your hero. Thanks for playing.
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