A Tea Party Conservative's Defense of Ron Paul...and His Supporters

You seem to want to make this personal, Black Elk, with all the personal attacks & baits that go off in every direction. Not interested. I'm here to talk about the relevant issue at hand. It's why when you asked my opinion on something else back in July, I told you that I hold no grudges. It's all intellectual to me here at FR. If I want to join a club, it won't be one that hides behind a keyboard.

Real conservatism isn't "a club", it's a political ideology that like it or not, contains strong elements of libertarianism at its core. And when Republicans stray too far from that and start trying to socialize the country in any direction, the libertarians will always be the group that tries to pull them back to those core values of the rights of the individual. It's the way it is and the way it's always been, which is why Ronald Reagan said that "libertarianism is the heart and soul of conservatism".

Almost 30 years ago in Beirut, Lebanon, the US lost 250 US soldiers to a suicide truck bomb. The response of our president was NOT to retaliate and start a war; it was to bring our troops home, later saying that "the politics of the Middle East are too complicated and irrational to get our soldiers involved in".

In today's political theater, that same president for same those actions would inevitably be vilified and called "a surrender monkey". But that very real scenario and very real president was Ronald Reagan -- you know the guy that all the current Republican candidates are currently pretending to carry the mantel of.

So please tell me what's changed? Have the politics of the Middle East gotten any less irrational? Or has what's called "conservativism" so changed that it has become just as irrational?

Libertarianism, as hallucinated by the paleobirdbrains, is nothing more than "I don't give a sh*t about anything but my personal portfolio" anarchy. The "relevant issue" is that the conservative movement is NOT going to be hijacked by a small platoon of eccentric "libertarian" crackpots led by the crackpot in chief likes of paleoPaulie.

I was a state chairman for Reagan when he challenged Feckless Ford (an exemplar of the globalist wing of the "I don't give a sh*t about anything but my personal portfolio" club). I am appalled that the followers of the paleosurrenderman and, indeed, El Run himself, have the nerve to cite Reagan as authority. We have the Paulistinians posting campaign photos of Ronaldus Maximus with Paul such as any Republican White House offers to any GOP nominee for Congress as though it would prove a close relationship. The Paulistinians conveniently forget Paul's denunciations of Ronaldus Maximus while he was still in office and Paul was the very crackpot candidate of the very crackpot Libertarian Party. We have the oft-repeated canard about libertarianism being the heart and soul of conservatism. That is an incoherent contribution to the current controversy. The late Frank Meyer, who tended toward libertarianism personally (at a time when he was not yet a religious believer) wrote In Defense of Freedom as his explanation and defense of what he called fusionism, the non-toxic combination of reasonable libertarians and traditionalists in one movement, minimizing their hostilities and building upon their agreements. This also became the philosophy of Murray Rothbard once he became a believer and realized the errors of his prior advocacy among the Llewellyn Rockwell set.

The CONSERVATIVE movement is not at all dependent upon the obsessive "I gotta be ME!!!" nonsense of the modern organized libertarians. Much less does it depend upon joining Cain (the fratricidal murderer in Genesis) in saying: "I am not my brother's keeper." Much less does it depend upon the career of lies and dishonesty that is Ron Paul and his phony claims of being pro-life and pro-family while absolutely refusing to DO ANYTHING about either while they are under attack by the fedcourts. Much less does it depend on Ron Paul's lying claims to "fiscal conservatism" while stuffing every House appropriations bill with scads of pork for Galveston depending upon his similarly pork-craving colleagues to vote his pork into law while he poses primly for holy pictures and votes NO.

There may be any number of reasons why Ronaldus Maximus did not retaliate for the barracks bombing, not least of which may have been growing up in the then shamefully isolationist Midwest. I tend to think his decision was to keep his eyes on the prize of destroying the communism of the soviet union by destroying the soviet union by driving them out of a financial competition they could not win in a world of growing technology such as xerographic copying, fax communication, cell phone technology, which facilitated samizdat communication and spelled the practical end of soviet internal tyranny. That no blood was shed in the endgame was a pleasant byproduct and not a primary goal, not unlike the rarity of American casualties in the war against Serbia's communist Slobodan Milosevic dictatorship. Islam is messier but communism was always a more vital target for destruction. We do not HAVE to share the earth with either of these evils but Reagan put his emphasis on "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

The world is a complicated place and issues do not exist in neat vacuums wherein we may make believe that there is no interrelation. If those interrelationships and complications are a challenge for you, well, that's just the way the world works.

Also, Syria and Lebanon hold little in the way of compelling interests for the USA. Little in the way of oil or food or ores. Nothing in the way of rational trade partners. We have little need for the colorful aspects of their local cultures or fanciful hallucinations as to the meaning of the Koran. Perpetual civil wars not unlike Somalia with few admirable forces to be identified. If the USA is limited in its ability to intervene, it must limit its interventions to situations that justify intervention in the sole determination of the USA and for what we and we alone regard as adequate reason. We intervened, inter alia, because the Balkans in general and Serbia in particular have a long history as chronic trouble zones. Does the name Gavrilo Princip ring a bell?

Ronald Reagan narrated a lengthy film documentary as to the actual history of communism in power primarily in Russia and Eastern and Central Europe. Libertarians who imagine themselves following in the footsteps of Ronaldus Maximus are no more doing so than is his son and namesake Little Ronnie Tutu of PMSNBC fame. They should view the documentary and be sure to have a supply of smelling salts and restorative drugs on hand as it forcefully removes them from their fantasies.

Wat would ANY supporter of Ron Paul know about Real conservatism?

When conservatives maintain their own very real principles and reject the excesses and fantasies of drug-loving, abortion-supporting, homosexuality cheering, isolationist treasonweasel admiring, Kumbaya towards our enemies practicing libertarians, the libertarians will always try to drag conservatives towards their libertine and pacifist "values." In response, conservatives will crush libertarian movements such as that, as El Run and his leftwing college crazies found out in 2008 and will find out while weeping over his absolute political destruction in 2012. Neither Paulie nor his crazed followers are going to redefine conservatism to fit their eccentricities.

I am not at all interested in the "politics" of the Middle East. I support Israel because it has earned American support. As to the rest, either they behave or get out of the way or I would be happy to see us render everything they value flat, black and glowing in the dark. They have wanted attention in spite of their essential irrelevancy. Well, they got it.

Reagan was no surrendermonkey. He earned his spurs in the conservative movement for many years and earned the confidence of conservatives. This certainly cannot be said of El Run Paulie.

Neither lying delusionist/isolationist Ron Paul nor globaloneyists Mittens Romney nor Jon Huntsman nor New Mexico's Marijuana Johnson are fit to mop Ronaldus Maximus's privy. SOME of the other candidates: Rick Santorum, Michelle Bachman, Herman Cain, possibly Rick Perry, possibly Newt Gingrich may well rationally lay claim to Reagan's political legacy. None perfect but the last five infinitely more perfect than Paul, Romney and Huntsman and the eccentric former governor of New Mexico.

I have not checked your links but I will.

Your first link was as to your views as an Eastern Orthodox Christian and, despite our obvious differences, I was willing to defer to your explanation of the beliefs of your religion. There is no relevant analogy to anything in the political efforts of Ron Paul.

Likewise, in the Wikipedia article on the Beirut bombing, you will note that Reagan pulled the surviving Marines not to Galveston but to islands off Lebanon, sent the very substantially enhanced Battleship USS New Jersey to the waters off Lebanon and then, when New Jersey had arrived in early 1984, ordered it to bombard the terrorist training camp in the Bekaa Valley back to the Stone Age physically as well as theologically. Do you have any grasp of the affect of 300 big, rocket assisted shells??? This is not how the Paulistinians usually market the situation as Reagan emulating Cut and Run in advance. Have you heard anything out of the Bekaa Valley Islamofascist training camps since early 1984? Neither have I.

You will also note that I support unilaterally arrived at US decisions to wage war against our enemies and not cooperative efforts under NATO or the UN. Saddam Hussein is dead. Uday and Kucay are dead. The Republican Guard is a bad memory. In the absence of any new provocation and, assuming unfortunately, that we are not going to collect every last nickel of expense out of the Iraqi oil wells, there seems little reason to remain. Osama bin Laden seems dead by the salutary method of sending SEALS into Pakistan whether they like it or not and without notifying them or obtaining their approval and, golleee, look who we found even though the Pakistanis claimed no knowledge. Any more guff from Pakistan and we should beef up India verrry substantially. NATO has outlived its usefulness and the UN never had any. We don't need to contest over Libya (their oil is committed to old Europe and old Europe can fight its own battles or freeze in the dark as they see fit). I believe that the Brits are self-sufficient and only they are reliable allies of the US. It is time the rest of useless old Europe got its act together, learned how to wage its own wars again, and fought its own war in Libya without us. Europe blooded again in war might be less socialist and more manly and none too soon.

That does not mean that actual conservatives will ever join El Run and the Islamofascists roasting Smores and singing Kumbaya around the old campfires. Not now. Not ever.

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