You certainly can. We all form opinions of people based on things they have done or haven't done.
Give me one, solitary, rational reason why the $100 he sent him spends any differently than the $100 I sent.
:::sigh::: You know perfectly well it has nothing to do with how the money 'spends'. It has to do with the reflection on the character of the person accepting the money once they know who they are accepting it from, particularly when the recipient of the donation wants to be put into a position to impact the direction of this country.
No, it's using nothing more than your logic taken to its conclusion.
Hardly. I've already pointed out to you why your analogy is flawed. See above. A man working a counter in a store is vastly different from someone wanting to be president (or even congress-critter).I'm trying to find out where the line between relevant "affiliation" for you begins and ends.
Already stated twice in this post alone, and at least once in my last one. (I'm not going to go back and count.) But just in case you still don't get it, let me say it one more time. There is a vast difference between some guy living in your neighborhood and someone who wants to be president or a congress-critter so they can directly impact the direction this nation is going.
Why?
Already answered, but let me state it again. Because it indicates that the person accepting the donation agrees with the stated positions and/or actions of the individual or group giving the donation. I'd have a real problem with a presidential candidate taking donations from organized crime. Apparently, that would be fine with you, as long as that politician verbally promised not to be swayed to provide any help or support to them.
Aside from the unclear nature of such terms. . .
Sure it is unclear. . .because it is a subjective term. Everyone bases who they vote for and which candidates they support on subjective criteria. . .even you.
As Ron Paul correctly said, every dollar that someone gives me is one less dollar that they have to promote their agenda, and one more that I have to promote mine.
Soros has a whole lot of dollars. ;)
If you don't agree with someone's agenda, you stop sending them money, because you know that if you do, you are supporting their values, not yours.
You DO realize this statement supports my case, right? Why would the 'truthers' and 'Code Pink' send money to Ronnie if they didn't think his agenda was somewhat consistent with theirs? Hint: They wouldn't.
No, like you, I hold all politicians to the same standards.
If Hillary Clinton were to accept money from organized crime, you'd not have a problem with that? Okay. I would.
No, I call it lazy thinking. .
When you can manage to pull together some real analogies and not compare volkswagons to oranges, then you'll have some room to talk about the lazy thinking of others.
The only distinction you are making here is scale.
If by scale you mean the size of the impact on the nation as a whole, yes. A person standing behind a counter in a store doesn't have the impact as the President or a Congress-critter.
So, a councilman of a 100 person town can take money from racists and it's OK
If it were my town, and he knew the money was coming from a publicly avowed racist, I'd be completely against him. But you didn't use that example - you used the example of a guy working in a store taking money from a racist. Two different things.
Is it OK for, say, Microsoft to partner with Stormfront to do activst work?
They can do whatever they want. Doesn't mean I wouldn't scream about it, and/or refuse to buy their products. Since Microsoft isn't running for office, I can't withhold my vote from them. (You know that, right?)
Ron Paul does.
Oh, he probably does. Doesn't mean he is being honest about it with the public. (And by the way, hopefully you've finally grasped the principle of what I have been saying. You may not agree with it, and that's fine, but you pretending not to 'get it' won't change my position.
Yes, I can. But if you are trying to be responsible in your evaluations then at some point you have to examine the rules under which you operate to see if they actually map to reality accurately.
You know perfectly well it has nothing to do with how the money 'spends'.
No, it has everything to do with how it spends.
Ron Paul acquires money from donations. That money is then spent on a campaign that would allow him to implement through legal mechanisms the policies that he believes in. The more money he acquires, the more likely he can do this. If he wins, he implements said policies to the best of his ability, and the law changes.
When the law changes, our legal status as citizens also changes. We can do things we couldn't do before without fear of prosecution. We can pay less in taxes. We can fill our fewer forms. We can start business we couldn't have. We can eat more of what we want, speak more of what we want. Or, if the wrong person gets elected, less.
Everything I've listed above are real, specific consequences of his getting $100, consequences that come down to you and me in the form of tangible, measureable differences. Meanwhile, you talk vaugely of "reflections" and "character" and "affiliation", but you have yet to come up with one real-world example of how any of this supposed import makes it down to me and you in terms of specific differences that we can see in our lives.
Yes, it is all about how that $100 spends. He acquires donations to achieve public office to promote liberty. Give me one, just one, real, tangible, step-by-step reason why the source of that money makes it unable for him to do so. One.
Hardly. I've already pointed out to you why your analogy is flawed.
No you haven't. You stated it was different, but you didn't state why. "Don't take money from..." was the closest you came to any specific principle, but you didn't say who that statement applied to. So who does it, and why?
Because it indicates that the person accepting the donation agrees with the stated positions and/or actions of the individual or group giving the donation.
Why? Where do you get this "indication" from? From where does this rule originate? You're stating this over and over, but I have yet to see any evidence that this rule is the logical extension of any other truth and is nothing more than simply an unsupported premise that exists for its own sake.
That is why I give you the examples, because those examples prove its logical flaws, and those in turn prove the premise must be flawed. "The person accepting": is that everyone, or just politicians? "The stated positions": every last position? "The actions": every last action? Where is the line? The reason none exists is that there can never be any consistent principle in this matter. If you only accepted money from people that agreed with you 100% in every instance, you would only accept money from yourself.
It clearly doesn't work like that, and even you I doubt would agree on that meaning. So clearly, there is some flaw in your principle. And that is because the principle itself is flawed.
I'd have a real problem with a presidential candidate taking donations from organized crime. Apparently, that would be fine with you, as long as that politician verbally promised not to be swayed to provide any help or support to them.
Close, and for that much I commend you. It would be fine with me if there were enough evidence that said politician would be true to his word. Paul has 10 terms of proven voting record to say that he would be. Clinton, to say the least, does not. I believe him. Because I believe him, I don't care one whit who donates to him. That's more money for his message, not theirs.
Sure it is unclear. . .because it is a subjective term.
I'm glad that we're starting to come to some agreement. It is OK and inevitable to be subjective in judgment. Being subjective in principle is another thing. You may say whatever you want of Paul's principle in this matter, but subjective it is not.
Soros has a whole lot of dollars. ;)
Yes, he does. *shrug* But if that would matter to you, you should take a look at who Soros did fund.
If Hillary Clinton were to accept money from organized crime, you'd not have a problem with that?
I would because everything about her life story (not two small, isolated highly disputed incidents) tells me that she will happily follow their lead and let this people tell her how to act. You do remember that I answered essentially this question right at the start of the thread when you asked it about Obama, yes?
Tell me all about all of the racists organizations Ron Paul has been a part of. Tell me about his racist business dealings. Tell me about his racist voting record. Please.
All you have are two very disputed items, and when I ask you talk about the pattern it creates. When I ask you to show me where all this pattern exists in his life, you point back to these two. You are arguing in circles.
It's very simple. The donations he accepts because money he gets is money to promote liberty. The newsletter incident he has already stated he did not know about, has apologized for nonetheless, has made his own feelings on racism quite clear, and has a 20-year voting record that is consistent with his own stated philosophy. Both of these items have simple, normal, understandable explanations that don't have anything to do with racism.
Here, I'll give you another one just to prove my point. He voted against awarding a Congressional Medal to Rosa Parks. OMG! He's a racist! Well, no, actually. He voted against it for the same reason he voted against giving one to Ronald Reagan: it's taxpayer money. With each vote he offered to put up his own private money if everyone else in Congress did the same (of course no one did).
You're not seeing the patterns. You're inventing them. Like a lot of the left when it suits them, you're finding racism only because it's convenient to you, and not because it's real.
You DO realize this statement supports my case, right?
No, it doesn't. Read what I said again:
Liberals boycotted Domino's Pizza because their pro-choice dollars became pro-life dollars in the company owner's hands (or so they thought). Conservatives boycott liberal media because their conservative dollars become liberal dollars in their hands.
I don't know why this is a such a difficult concept. Let me state it clearly:
Once a dollar leaves a person's hands, unless it is a pre-arranged part of the agreement (in which case, it effectively never left that person's hands in the first place), it loses all values of the person who gave it, and takes on the values of the person who acquired it.
It loses it because that person no longer has any control over it! Once you give me a dollar, once that transaction is complete, that dollar is now mine, and falls under my rules, not yours. Do you not understand that this is the whole point of private property?
Why would the 'truthers' and 'Code Pink' send money to Ronnie if they didn't think his agenda was somewhat consistent with theirs? Hint: They wouldn't.
Or maybe they don't understand his policies well enough, and are reading things into the man that aren't there based on a few tiny pieces of data. Much like you are doing. Here's a question to ask you in turn: why do professional lobbyists (ie, people with likely vastly more political experience than some random Stormfront ranter behind his monitor) not even bother with Paul?
Answer: he'll take their money, and keep doing what he's doing anyway. They expect to control him, but can't, so they just slip by him. Why do they keep giving Paul money? (Assuming they do, of course: how much hard data in terms of dollars on this do you actually have?) Who knows? I hope you're not going to afford proud racists with an abundance of intelligence or political insight.
We don't know why they do, if even they do. What we do know is Paul's voting record. There is no ambiguity there.
When you can manage to pull together some real analogies and not compare volkswagons to oranges, then you'll have some room to talk about the lazy thinking of others.
When you can show how this is Volkswagons and oranges in terms of some consistent principle than you'll have room for said admonishment.
If by scale you mean the size of the impact on the nation as a whole, yes.
So then, right and wrong for you is not based on the nature of the action but the scale of it. Do I have you correct?
If it were my town, and he knew the money was coming from a publicly avowed racist, I'd be completely against him.
OK, then if I have you right, this rule than applies to all elected officials, no matter the size of their jurisdiction. Do I have you correct? If so we can work from that, but I'll tell you right now, I don't think you'll like where the questions lead from there.
They can do whatever they want. Doesn't mean I wouldn't scream about it, and/or refuse to buy their products. Since Microsoft isn't running for office, I can't withhold my vote from them. (You know that, right?)
Wow, gee, never thought of that. Oh wait, yes I did! But irrelevant, because you never said anything about someone being in office. You simply said, "Because it indicates that the person accepting the donation agrees with the stated positions and/or actions of the individual or group giving the donation." Let's kindly not distract ourselves with focuses on the word "donation", m'kay? A donation can become a purchase and a purchase a doniation with trivial effort.
So then, does a company agree with every stated position and/or action of the individual giving them money? Yes or no? Or is this another case where it does only dependent on the scale?
Oooh, I got a better one: politicians often own companies themselves. Should those companies stop dealing with racists since that money will go towards the politician eventually, making them as rich as, oh, I don't know, Mitt Romney? Or for that matter, George Bush? Every last person with any questionable motives whatsoever?
I could keep asking questions like this all day, because your principle is not consistent. Paul's is. You can attack it all day, but all you have is disagreement with the principle, not any proof that the principle isn't consistent. You have only two very vague, disputed incidents to point to, and despite the fact that I've given clear, rational explanations for both of them, you continue to hold onto racism as the only explanation, and for no other reason than some rule about "affiliation" that you seem to just take as true for it's own sake, despite the fact that it a) isn't based on any other truth, and seems to exist for its own sake, and b) unlike Paul's approach, creates horrible clashes of consistency if we try to apply it to the real-world.
But OK, so we disagree on the meaning of these two items. Let's use the rest of Paul's life as a guide to help us understand them. Hmmm... how's it looking?
Paul's philosophy is simple, clear, consistent, and doesn't lend itself to grey areas. Yours is not: it is based on undefined terms, logical extensions that lead to clearly false conclusions, and inconsistency with the simple reality of how money works. All of this could either be out of choice or error, I don't know. But until you can show me how your philosophy applies in every situation, I see no reason why I should take your calls of Paul's "racism" any more seriously than the typical calls of the same from the left. And as someone who has been accused of it countless in my life, I know what that false accusation feels like through vast, personal experience.
Try all you want, though unless you provide a good, rational response, don't be surprised if I stop responding soon, since I don't think our respective views at this point are unclear to anyone watching. And these days, even on forgotten threads like this one, a lot of people are.