Globalism [Ron Paul]

House.Gov ^ | 16 July 2007 | Ron Paul

[BGHater]

The recent defeat of the amnesty bill in the Senate came after outraged Americans made it clear to the political elite that they would not tolerate this legislation, which would further erode our national sovereignty. Similarly, polls increasingly show the unpopularity of the Iraq war, as well as of the Congress that seems incapable of ending it.

Because some people who vocally oppose amnesty are supportive of the war, the ideological connection between support of the war and amnesty is often masked. If there is a single word explaining the reasons why we continue to fight unpopular wars and see legislation like the amnesty bill nearly become law, that word is “globalism.”

The international elite, including many in the political and economic leadership of this country, believe our constitutional republic is antiquated and the loyalty Americans have for our form of government is like a superstition, needing to be done away with. When it benefits elites, they pay lip service to the American way, even while undermining it.

We must remain focused on what ideology underlies the approach being taken by those who see themselves as our ruling-class, and not get distracted by the passions of the moment or the rhetorical devices used to convince us how their plans will be “good for us.” Whether it is managed trade being presented under the rhetoric of “free trade,” or the ideas of “regime change” abroad and “making the world safe for democracy” -- the underlying principle is globalism.

Although different rhetoric is used in each instance, the basic underlying notion behind replacing regimes abroad and allowing foreign people to come to this country illegally is best understood by comprehending this ideal of the globalist elite. In one of his most lucid moments President Bush spoke of the “soft bigotry of low expectations.” Unfortunately, that bigotry is one of the core tenets at the heart of the globalist ideology.

The basic idea is that foreigners cannot manage their own affairs so we have to do it for them. This may require sending troops to far off lands that do not threaten us, and it may also require “welcoming with open arms” people who come here illegally. All along globalists claim a moral high ground, as if our government is responsible for ensuring the general welfare of all people. Yet the consequences are devastating to our own taxpayers, as well as many of those we claim to be helping.

Perhaps the most seriously damaged victim of this approach is our own constitutional republic, because globalism undermines both the republican and democratic traditions of this nation. Not only does it make a mockery of the self-rule upon which our republic is based, it also erodes the very institutions of our republic and replaces them with international institutions that are often incompatible with our way of life.

The defeat of the amnesty bill proves though that there is no infallible logic, or predetermined march of history, that forces globalism on us.

[George W. Bush]

Any member of the CFR is an automatic disqualification for me. That means Fred's out without further thought.

Merely being a member of CFR is just belonging to the main U.S. foreign policy think tank, being able to attend their seminars, getting their publications. Personally, I find attending Bilderberger get-togethers, as Bush has done, to be far far more sinister.

It's agreeing with the CFR's open-borders globalist America-world-policeman agenda that is the problem we have. I don't think you can assemble much from Fred's record for taking that position publicly.

I'm not supporting Fred. But most of us RP supporters aren't rules-bound thinkers. Personally, I have attended a couple of meetings of organizations I personally loathe over the years just to get the dirt on them for myself. I've also trolled lib organizations just to get on their mailing lists and their phone lists so they squander their resources calling and mailing me just so I can cost them money and abuse their phone banks, the same way many of us used the pro-amnesty toll-free hotlines to make anti-shamnesty calls. Every little bit helps.

[Borax Queen]

I'm a great-grandpa who understands that all these years of voting for "bad" instead of worse have gotten us the same place just one or two "worse' would have.

bttt

[nicmarlo]

I understand what you’re saying about becoming a member for the purpose of knowing what they’re doing.

But that surely doesn’t seem to be the case with Fred. He has more than that, speaking on their behalf. That changes things from being a mere observer to something different altogether.

You assign innocence to him for this membership, but upon what is this assumption based? A belief? This isn’t quite like a court of law where innocence is presumed first. Much the same as when I raised my children to stay away from bad apples. Once you hang around those kinds of kids, it’s the good kid who becomes another bad apple in the group, it doesn’t work in reverse, ever.

Unless and until I can have something to prove that Fred is not part and parcel of the CFR’s globalist/NWO agenda, he’ll remain in the negative column. Just how I think about this.

[MEGoody]

LOL Looney Paul speaks again.

[MEGoody]

I'll give Paul credit as well, we need to get out of the nation building business

Just curious. . .which of these options on Iraq do you think we should have taken:

Not go into Iraq at all

Go into Iraq and withdraw immediately upon the 'fall' of Saddam

Go into Iraq and withdraw immediately upon the capture of Saddam

Continue fighting in Iraq until the new government is stable

[George W. Bush]

But that surely doesn’t seem to be the case with Fred. He has more than that, speaking on their behalf. That changes things from being a mere observer to something different altogether.

To me, it doesn't disqualify him. Nor does his lobbying for a pro-abortion group when he was employed as a lobbyist by a lobbying law firm (not that I like that). But his own votes and speeches are strongly pro-life and pro-family.

I'm just saying I don't slam the door on him yet. And that I'm going to try to vote for the GOP nominee if they don't pick a leftwing transvestite enemy of the Constitution that talks like a fascist.

[rhombus]

Ok, Paul will just cut some funds somewhere and not upset current infrastructures. This seems much more realistic than the Utopian founding father dreams that many of his supporters prattle on about with no details. There will be all sorts of promises about cuts coming from the GOP candidates as well while the other side will promise everything to everybody.

Good luck with ending the Presidential majesty thing. Bush ran on “restoring dignity” to the office after Clinton... um, did what he did which wasn’t very majestic. People have grown accustomed to seeing a President out there and certainly the press gets downright violent if the President doesn’t succumb to their verbal abuse sessions. I also remember during the hostage crisis Carter stayed at home claiming he was working on the crisis and people accused him of just hiding. One of the biggest complaints against Bush is that he didn’t communicate very well or often enough. Were Paul to just ignore all the ba$tard$, I doubt it would be interpreted the way you hope (i.e., turning their attention to Congress).

I respectfully disagree with the “no credible threat” phrase. The WMD was really the oil and all the nasty things that were being bought by the oil (weapons, research for weapons, payola to other countries, etc.). But that’s all history now. Is it up to the President to decide if a country is a credible threat or the Congress? If we want to take Congress more seriously we should respect their votes. They first voted for regime change and then voted to give the President authorization to use force for regime change. All this because they saw Iraq as a credible threat (as did Bush of course). This is far more legitimacy than any President has had since FDR received one of the five declarations of war in all of US history. Paul may have not seen a credible threat but the rest of Congress did.

By the way, it’s time to change your “handle”. As you know, there’s no way George W. Bush would support Ron Paul and I suspect you don’t support Bush either. :-)

[nicmarlo]

I'm going to try to vote for the GOP nominee if they don't pick a leftwing transvestite enemy of the Constitution that talks like a fascist.

Sounds like a good plan! : )

[SittinYonder]

You are correct; I humbly apologize for my error.

It was all in good fun, no apology necessary ;-)

[nicmarlo]

Thank you for so graciously accepting my apology.

In haste, I jumped the gun and pulled out a sentence, not having read the entire post. You did such a good job sounding like the Paul bashers, I skipped over the first couple of lines you typed. Lesson learned (again). : )

[af_vet_rr]

Just curious. . .which of these options on Iraq do you think we should have taken:

I wasn't talking about Iraq, I was talking about all of the money we are throwing around, whether it's to the Palestinians (anybody who thinks at least some of it won't be funneled to an anti-Israeli group is foolish), or Pakistan (nothing like hearing our National Security Advisor admit that the 100s of millions we've spent on Pakistan didn't do much of anything for us and even with all of that aide, we still aren't allowed to go in and look for Bin Laden), and the list goes on (although ironically enough, when it's Christians being slaughtered by radical Muslims in Africa, we turn a blind eye).

As far as Iraq, I'll give you my brief opinion (I don't consider Iraq to be a part of the nationbuilding we are doing elsewhere, but now we have to build it):

I don't think we should have went in based on four reasons:

(In hindsight) the intelligence we had was shoddy and poorly misinterpreted (what you would see would be different than what I would see, and what Joe Blow in the Pentagon sees would be different than both of us).

Al Qaeda wasn't in Iraq until after the fact. I didn't need to hear it from a Pentagon official earlier this year to know that Saddam might bring in one or two Al Q leaders for meetings, but he would never allow Al Qaeda (or any organization) to organize and operate within Iraq, because that would be a threat to his power, and he dealt harshly and swiftly with threats to his power (witness the Kurds, the Shiites that we encouraged to rise up, etc.).

We weren't finished in Afghanistan.

Finally, most importantly, We didn't have as many troops going in as we needed - even had the Turks allowed the 4th ID to go through their territory, it wasn't enough - large parts of Iraq were never properly "conquered" by us, which helped give them the impression that we weren't as strong as we are. I'm not saying that we needed to go slaughtering people all over Iraq, it's just that we needed a much larger troop footprint, to reassure the locals and and send a message to foreigners that we had all of Iraq covered from top to bottom.

You can only conquer and bargain from a position of strength, whether it was the Japanese or Germans in WWII that knew they had been beaten, or the North Vietnamese coming to the table after we bombed the hell out of them, or the North Koreans/Chinese pushing through a cease fire after we pushed over the 38th Parallel in a big way. Iraqis never felt that, along with parts of the Iraqi military, whom we bypassed as being insignificant for one reason or another, and who would later make up the core of the resistance in the early days before Saddam was capture and before the insurgency became the norm.

Putting aside everything else (as hard as it is for me to lay aside the poor intelligence analysis), the need for more troops from the beginning rests squarely on Bush's and Rumsfeld's shoulders. Post 9/11, when we still had a Republican Congress, Bush/Rumsfeld should have pushed for large increases on the military caps and budgets. It was quiet clear we would be fighting around the world, for long periods of time.

Even after the war in Iraq started, we should have had a large increase in the military. We had a Congress that was willing.

The first President Bush started to gut the military after Gulf War I, and Clinton really got things going, and when you look back at the 1990s, a lot of people that were RIFed out would have been, had they stayed in, our mid-level and upper-level NCOs and Officers. We lost a lot of experienced military personnel due to Bush and Clinton, and George W Bush should have really pushed to bring the military back up to larger levels (including potentially reaching out to those RIFed

Now, because of the piss-poor way in which the war in Iraq was sold to the American people, and because of the piss-poor way in which it was managed (instead of firing the upper civilian leadership in the DoD, CIA, etc., we give them all kinds of medals and praise), we've created a situation where the Democrats are going to pull us out, come hell or high water, and that's going to leave a destabilized Iraq, subject to takeover by Al Qaeda or by proxy Iran. That means, that when all is said and done, by the time George W Bush leaves office, the Middle East will be a much deadlier place, and our enemies will be stronger, because all of the work we have done in Afghanistan will have been offset by our failures in Pakistan, and by our leaving Iraq before they can get their feet under them.

[George W. Bush]

Ok, Paul will just cut some funds somewhere and not upset current infrastructures. This seems much more realistic than the Utopian founding father dreams that many of his supporters prattle on about with no details. There will be all sorts of promises about cuts coming from the GOP candidates as well while the other side will promise everything to everybody.

No, we're talking something more like a veto-a-day. Pork, deficit spending, debt expansion, etc. Repeal of Patriot Act. And declassification and publication of many existing secret documents on our government's previous misdeeds. And a constant stream of condemnation of porkbarreling and federal intrusion into state responsibilities like, for instance, education.

And he wouldn't be advocating for a mere reduction in income taxes. He'd continue to demand the repeal of the Sixteenth altogether.

So he's not just another variety of the establishment Republicans.

Good luck with ending the Presidential majesty thing. Bush ran on “restoring dignity” to the office after Clinton... um, did what he did which wasn’t very majestic. People have grown accustomed to seeing a President out there and certainly the press gets downright violent if the President doesn’t succumb to their verbal abuse sessions. I also remember during the hostage crisis Carter stayed at home claiming he was working on the crisis and people accused him of just hiding. One of the biggest complaints against Bush is that he didn’t communicate very well or often enough. Were Paul to just ignore all the ba$tard$, I doubt it would be interpreted the way you hope (i.e., turning their attention to Congress).

Given the incoherence of his statements and press conferences, Bush should have shut the press off. In truth, the press has avoided broadcasting thousands of Bush gaffes because that then limits their ability to report on him as part of the press beat. They actually hide some of his biggest public goofs because they need to cover the imperial trappings as filler for the ads they sell which are the real source of their income.

The press would hate President Paul. He wouldn't star in any of their dog-and-pony shows.

I respectfully disagree with the “no credible threat” phrase. The WMD was really the oil and all the nasty things that were being bought by the oil (weapons, research for weapons, payola to other countries, etc.). But that’s all history now.

Yes it is. And there was no WMD, there were no weapons that posed a credible threat to America or to any country in the region. And the only reason to think they were a threat was because of all the weapons and WMD we did actually give them when we egged them into the devastating war with Iran. And yet, it was Iran that Saddam sent his airforce off to for safety when we started shooting them down. Notice how they close ranks against us? After eight years of mutual and bitter destruction, Saddam and the Iranians patched things up pretty quickly against the common enemy: us. This is part of what Ron Paul calls the "irrationality of Middle Eastern politics".

Is it up to the President to decide if a country is a credible threat or the Congress?

I answered that back in #152 but here's the gist:

Ron Paul separates it this way as best I understand (he spoke directly about it the other day):

1. The president has the right and duty to protect the country with unlimited unilateral action including preemptive strikes in the event of a credible imminent threat without consulting Congress. (Or the United Nations.)
2. When going to war against a recognized sovereign power with an organized military, the Constitution prescribes that Congress alone must declare a war.
3. When taking action against terrorists, irregular forces under no national flag, pirates, etc., the president should seek the support of Congress before acting if there is no imminent threat that requires immediate action to protect our people or nation or trade.

At any rate, it's a pretty reasonable standard and one that works pretty well when reading the Founders and our early history and some of the history of the dispute of war powers between the legislative branch and the executive. It is not an unreasonable position. Well, unless only a dictator makes you feel safe but I think we all know how the Founders felt about those dangers.

If we want to take Congress more seriously we should respect their votes. They first voted for regime change and then voted to give the President authorization to use force for regime change. All this because they saw Iraq as a credible threat (as did Bush of course). This is far more legitimacy than any President has had since FDR received one of the five declarations of war in all of US history. Paul may have not seen a credible threat but the rest of Congress did.

Regime change is not a concept of the Founders. It is the action of a global empire. Even during the Cold War, our hand was pretty restrained in such matters. And we can look at Europe to see the results of how so many other global empires ended. Badly. And they were a domestic disaster in the end for their peoples. Not to mention the toll taken on human rights and liberty.

By the way, it’s time to change your “handle”. As you know, there’s no way George W. Bush would support Ron Paul and I suspect you don’t support Bush either. :-)

I did vote for Bush in 2000, reluctantly. Many of the liberal things he's done were predicted by some of us. But his outrageous spending and his general incompetence at removing Xlintonian moles from the federal agencies under his control was unexpected.

And I would probably change the handle if I could. I just don't want to give up my 1999 "seniority" date.

[nicmarlo]

good post!

[rhombus]

I understand about the seniority thing.

So Paul would “shut down Washington” with his vetoes? Newt tried that and got pummeled. I expect there’d be plenty of overrides because both parties would join against him.

Paul is going to “demand” the repeal of the 16th amendment? OK now you’re smoking crack. He can demand that now and probably has. He can demand it as demander in chief if he wants. It will just be a dog and pony show. Clearly he won’t have any credibility with the Congress so it would just be a fund-raising stunt.

So Saddam wouldn’t have had any WMD if we hadn’t given it to him, eh? You sure sound like a left-winger on that one. That WMD dog won’t hunt so you should really drop it if you’re seeking credibility. I expect Saddam could and did buy what he wanted from many sources as captured documents have shown. This doesn’t mean that America didn’t help him at some times in the past but to bring that up sure smells of “blame America”. But that’s all history and it doesn’t matter now except... WMD proliferation will continue to grow and now people won’t believe it until they see it. Sadly... well so be it.

The stuff you wrote on regime change is just your opinion. The founders never specifically forbid it and many I believe very much supported France’s regime change (at first anyway) AND the founders certainly approved of France’s effort at regime change in the Colonies.

[BigTom85]

Right, but this is not a ‘quasi-war’. As far as you other example goes, I will have to do some reading into that before I make proper judgement on it.

[SJackson]

We seem to have people claiming that on most of these threads, as though Saddam (not Osama) was the leader of al-Qaeda.

I seriously doubt the White House was basing it’s decisions on Freerepublic posters.

He was correct about the lack of WMDs. IMO Powell is correct that they would have been there in spades had we not invaded an sanctions lifted…..So the guy who actually opposed the invasion in private with Bush but went to the U.N. with all that false information now wants to do some CYA by saying "does anyone doubt that if left unchecked, Saddam would have made WMD"...well, who the hell was suggesting that we lift the sanctions anyway? It's a straw man argument. Neither the GOP nor the Dims were saying we should lift the sanctions on Iraq.

I don’t think he went in front of the UN with false information, that’s conspiracy theory stuff. I think Bush and Powell firmly believed there were WMDs in Iraq, as did most of the world.

My understanding is that Powell’s opposition to the invasion centered around troop levels. He felt they were inadequate to maintain order and seal the borders. In retrospect, he was correct. Sanctions wouldn’t have been maintained indefinitely, nor would inspections. And I agree with his assessment that once lifted, Sadaam would have reverted to his old ways.

Powell is irrelevant and was almost as incompetent as Rice is. And I don't have to tell you that they are both essentially enemies of Israel's vital security interests. Whatever the question is, Powell and Rice are not the answer. Especially if you care about Israel.

Politically irrelevant, perhaps, he’s not in office, which is irrelevant as to the validity of his opinion. What Israel has to do with all this is beyond me. Why Israel and my religion frequently come up on Ron Paul threads is quite bizarre.

[George W. Bush]

So Paul would “shut down Washington” with his vetoes? Newt tried that and got pummeled. I expect there’d be plenty of overrides because both parties would join against him.

Newt's failure was his lack of courage.

Paul is going to “demand” the repeal of the 16th amendment? OK now you’re smoking crack.

You'd be surprised how persuasive he can be on the topic. Really. He's made a lot of converts to that position who, before they heard him, thought it was impossible.

Of course, it would mean we have to largely give up the whole global-empire/world-policeman thing. If you love the Empire, don't vote for Ron Paul.

So Saddam wouldn’t have had any WMD if we hadn’t given it to him, eh?

Not necessarily. But one reason we knew he had WMD at one point was because we sold him the stocks of anthrax from U.S. labs. This is fact. We've got the lab and shipping receipts after all (you should be able to recall it). You might also recall that some of Saddam's programs during his Iran war was actually funded by fraud through BCCI and USDA agriculture programs. Some of the money that the taxpayers took the loss on in the S&L scandal of the late Eighties went right into Saddam's pockets.

But that’s all history and it doesn’t matter now except... WMD proliferation will continue to grow and now people won’t believe it until they see it. Sadly... well so be it.

Well, you can't blame them for being cynical. We should never have used the imminent-threat-of-WMD justification if we couldn't prove it. And now, with Iran who has a very serious program, people will of course be cynical about it. And that's our own damned fault. It doesn't pay to be the boy who cries wolf. Especially when you start acting like a bully as well.

The stuff you wrote on regime change is just your opinion. The founders never specifically forbid it and many I believe very much supported France’s regime change (at first anyway) AND the founders certainly approved of France’s effort at regime change in the Colonies.

Let's not mince words. The French favored anything that hurt Britain. They were rival world empires. And some of their nobility were flirting with ideas about democracy. Most of them were later to regret it during the French Revolution.

[MEGoody]

I wasn't talking about Iraq, I was talking about all of the money we are throwing around

However, you mentioned nation building, so I asked you about Iraq.

I was talking about all of the money we are throwing around

I agree. . .we should stop all aid to Islamic nations.

(In hindsight) the intelligence we had was shoddy and poorly misinterpreted

Perhaps. We know Iraq had WMD - we just don't know where they are now. There is information out that indicates some (if not all) were moved to Syria. We probably haven't gone in after them because, as bad as Syria is, they aren't as nutty as Saddam was, and they are less likely to actually use them. I believe we should have gone after Saddam in the first Gulf War, but we didn't. Personally, I'm glad that crazy man is gone.

Al Qaeda wasn't in Iraq until after the fact.

There is evidence that, while Al Queda wasn't publically welcomed in Iraq as they were in Afghanistan, Saddam did offer 'aid and comfort' to some members of their leadership. At the very least, we knew Saddam was supporting the Palestinian terrorists (he did so very publically).

We weren't finished in Afghanistan.

No, we weren't. But there may have been intelligence reasons not to wait. A lot has been made public (probably things that shouldn't have been), but there is still a lot of classified info we are not privy to.

We didn't have as many troops going in as we needed.

That was a military decision. We can disagree with their decisions, but since I'm not in the military, I am not privy to the discussions that went on. I presume that you are now supportive of the 'surge', and would even be in favor of deploying troops out of Europe, etc and sending them to Iraq?

[George W. Bush]

I don’t think he went in front of the UN with false information, that’s conspiracy theory stuff.

But it was false. You can say or believe anything you like. You're entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.

My understanding is that Powell’s opposition to the invasion centered around troop levels. He felt they were inadequate to maintain order and seal the borders. In retrospect, he was correct. Sanctions wouldn’t have been maintained indefinitely, nor would inspections. And I agree with his assessment that once lifted, Sadaam would have reverted to his old ways.

Amazing how we finally hear all this now. A cynical person might think Powell is just playing CYA and considering history's opinion of him.

Politically irrelevant, perhaps, he’s not in office, which is irrelevant as to the validity of his opinion. What Israel has to do with all this is beyond me. Why Israel and my religion frequently come up on Ron Paul threads is quite bizarre.

Probably because of ongoing charges that RP is some kind of antisemite. And the security of Israel is always a part of discussing policy in the oil patch.

[cinives]

He’d have 4 years at least - that sounds like plenty of time to me.