[Grunthor]

“Maybe you should make a nice graphic or slogan: “Vote Ron if you want to die”, “A vote for Ron is a vote for suicide”, “Ron Paul, the Suicide Candidate”...

LOL.”

In an age where a nuke can be handed off to a terrorist organization and our borders are wide open it is simply not feasible nor is it safe to elect someone that believes that it is a good idea to WAIT for an American city to go up in a mushroom cloud rather than acting to prevent it.

Or is is the preferable Libertarian thing to do for individual American citizens to protect themselves from terrorist attack and just leave the government out of it altogether?

[Puddleglum]

In an age where a nuke can be handed off to a terrorist organization and our borders are wide open it is simply not feasible nor is it safe to elect someone that believes that it is a good idea to WAIT for an American city to go up in a mushroom cloud rather than acting to prevent it.

It's crucial to define what constitutes national defense then, I guess. I admit it's harder to support a purely reactive posture when one mistake/slip-up can be so costly. That said, we can't let fear infringe on our civil liberties, and we must do something to A) get other nations to police their own crackpot breeding grounds (Saudi, Pakistan), and B) we must make every attempt to isloate the terrorists from the general populace by making them unsympathic to the general populace. It will be harder for them to "melt into the shadows" if the shadows want nothing to do with them. Stage B is where diplomacy comes in. Also, we must not prop up tyrants unless we expect those subjugated by the tyrants to someday get really, maybe even murderously, enraged.

This ties back into the "fair trade" discussion here or somewhere else (busy day). When you keep a tyrannical ruling class in power through trade and or economic or military support, and they fall from power, you have a whole generation of folks who think the USA more or less spreads evil throughout the world. Look at the list of folks we used to support in the ME: Iran, Iraq, the Mujahaden (al qaida). If it weren't so sad I'd call it the revenge of the bad dates.

[George W. Bush]

In an age where a nuke can be handed off to a terrorist organization and our borders are wide open it is simply not feasible nor is it safe to elect someone that believes that it is a good idea to WAIT for an American city to go up in a mushroom cloud rather than acting to prevent it.

Ron Paul is quite clear about a president's obligation to act unilaterally against imminent threats.

You know, some of you verge on the need for a dictator to protect us. And to accord ourselves the right to invade and topple any country that merely makes some CIA nelly a little nervous.

Nobody likes a bully. In the end, they band together for self-protection to defeat the bully.

[George W. Bush]

In an age where a nuke can be handed off to a terrorist organization and our borders are wide open it is simply not feasible nor is it safe to elect someone that believes that it is a good idea to WAIT for an American city to go up in a mushroom cloud rather than acting to prevent it.

Maybe you should blame those responsible for those open borders over which the nuke will come, eh? And that is not Ron Paul who was for closed borders long before most of FR or anyone else even thought about it.

Or is is the preferable Libertarian thing to do for individual American citizens to protect themselves from terrorist attack and just leave the government out of it altogether?

Why don't you ask a Libertarian? I'm not one. And Ron Paul, despite running for prez for the L-party back in '88, certainly has many disagreements with them on abortion (he's adamantly pro-life), on narcotics (he's opposed medically), on open-borders (he opposes completely), etc.

If you look at it fairly, I think you'd conclude that Ron Paul stands as squarely as he can on the text of the Constitution and the Founders, about exactly halfway between Libertarians and Republicans. He's not a perfect fit with either one, not the enemy of either one. Okay, if you must, you can make a crack that he's neither fish nor fowl. But much as Reagan didn't fit the very liberal Rockefeller Republican of his day, Ron Paul, Reagan's old friend and early congressional supporter in his '76 campaign, doesn't stand exactly square with his party either. And Reagan was a former Democrat and even a union president. So Ron Paul's resume as a former LP prez candidate and the fact he doesn't fit perfectly with the L or R mainstreams doesn't disqualify him. It makes him a fusion candidate, a source of fresh ideas. And, man, do we need some fresh ideas right about now!