Posted on 12/27/2011 12:27:24 PM PST by seanmerc
I'm not disagreeing.
I do think that we need to realize that some of the Ron Paul supporters are drawing a parallel to Goldwater and Reagan and saying that just because the liberals say someone is unelectable, that doesn't mean they can't win — it only means it takes time for their views to catch on.
This is a dangerous argument because it takes longstanding conservative principles — namely, that we win if we stick to our guns and motivate the troops rather than nominating wishy-washy moderates — and uses them in defense of Ron Paul's views which are fundamentally not only wrong but dangerous to national security.
I think part of Ron Paul's appeal is that he sounds conservative to people who wrongly believe that conservatives are just anti-this and anti-that, and don't realize we have a constructive agenda of what America should look like.
Libertarianism is not constitutional government. Maybe a few of the Founding Fathers could be argued to be libertarians, but you simply can't get Ron Paul's views out of the predominantly Christian moral consensus of late 1700s America, and even less so out of the society that developed in the next few decades after the constitution was ratified or which existed a few decades before the American Revolution.
I don't dispute that some of the “freethinkers” and elites in the group that led to the American Revolution spent some time partaking of the wild-eyed crazy ideas that led to the French Revolution. Fortunately America as a whole saw where those ideas led and rejected them soundly by the early 1800s.
Exactly. The stupidest thing about the “FDR knew” conspiracy theories is that there was nothing to gain by riding out an attack that one couldn’t get by exposing the plan. We’re talking about a country that went to war based on a telegram suggesting Mexico screw with us; the Congress wouldn’t have cared about a Japanese carrier group out to destroy a large portion of our navy and another task force that would take the Phillipines away? Yeah, sure.
I do see how it is done by facts and logic, not hyper-emotionalism of the RONULANS
After all, RONULANS demand that if the peopel vote for it, it’s CONSTITUTIONAL!
NO!
Our constitution is set up to support a REPUBLIC, NOT a democracy!
it is impossible to rightly govern without God and the Bible, and regardless of who originated this quote often said to be George Washington, it still stands.
Libertarians demand legal dope, legal prostitution, legal sin
get it yet?
You aren’t about LIBERTY, you are about LICENSE!
THINGS I WISH I HAD SAID
True Liberty is not license. Those who think as you, sir, pervert liberty, and destroy the fundamental principles that allow a culture to thrive economically. This is the error of libertarian philosophy.
What libertarianism proposes is moral relativism under the pretense of “non-interference.” However, in the final measure, the result is that guaranteed outcome of any morally ambiguous system, which denies human nature and the transcendent truths that govern all cause and effect relationships. In practice the imagined utopia of the libertarian is identical in its altruistic deception to that of atheistic communism; and the outcome is predictable: the destruction of the individual and the corporate body of humanity we call society.
Libertarians think they may advance the cause of “social liberalism” simultaneously with “fiscal conservatism;” but this duality of purpose is folly, and works diametrically and insidiously against itself. The social plagues induced by such novel philosophies invariably drain the public treasury, render the distinctions of absolute right and wrong to ambiguity, destroy public confidence in justice, and dissolve private wealth.
Human society does not and cannot exist in a moral vacuum. A society that having no absolute standards of conduct defers all decisions to the individual, exercising little or no restraint on behavior, abdicates the single most legitimate purpose of the state: to increase the common good and uphold the moral order. To quote Edmond Burke:
“Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites, — in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity, — in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption, — in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”
-— Letter to a Member of the National Assembly (1791)
A corrupt society, filled with men of licentious inclinations, cannot maintain its economic stability; or do you suppose the folly of the Roman Republic is worth revisiting in our times? “Give us bread and circuses!”
Economics does not transcend moral absolutes. Economics does not trump the Natural Law. History proves conclusively that no immoral or amoral culture can long prosper, nor survive its growing litany of perversions against the Natural Law; for such a corrupt body becomes its own undoing. Unfettered liberty generates unfettered vice.
Vice is not virtue; even if for a time libertarianism may advance a nation’s economic standing, it remains a foundation of sand because it denies the absolute transcendent truth indelibly stamped on the consciousness of every man by He who created all things. God is not mocked.
Shocking that Paul is leading in Iowa!!!!!!
Do not confuse supporting ending the War on Drugs with promoting drug use, nor promoting ending Prohibition with promoting alcoholism.
I'm not a libertarian myself, but dope was legal nationwide until 1914, when the Harrison Act was passed. You could say that drug prohibition was a gateway bill that led to alcohol prohibition in 1920. The crusading clerics who fulminated in favor of the prohibition of alcohol and dope are long dead, but dope prohibition remains, sucking up public safety resources that would be better directed towards property and violent crimes. Some people say we'd save money on cops, judges and prisons by legalizing dope. I say we'd process non-dope-related cases a lot faster without dope cases (30% of felony cases) clogging up the judicial system.
There is some concern that drug addiction leads to increased criminality in the form of theft and other things. Maybe we should make those crimes felonies and up the prison terms. Why target dope users who don't steal or rob?
Ron Paul's stuff on drug legalization is something I haven't bothered to get into because from what I can tell, his views are somewhere out in cloud cuckoo land and have virtually no support in most of the Republican Party — or for that matter, most of the American electorate since the end of the drug experimentation age that began in the 1960s and pretty much died out as people came to realize how dangerous those drugs really are.
Given your username, perhaps some consideration of why the Chinese tried to stamp out the corrupting influence of Western promotion of opium dens might be in order?
I've dealt with the consequences, up close and personal, of illegal drugs on the streets destroying communities where I have lived. Maybe you think marijuana is innocuous and not a gateway drug to worse stuff. You're wrong, but let's grant the point for a moment. Show me a logical reason to legalize marijuana while keeping heroin and methamphetamine illegal. If you think heroin and meth don't generate crimes because of the behaviors they produce, you need to spend some time dealing with a methhead.
Illegal drugs are illegal for a reason. They change people's behavior in ways that are socially damaging. The worst of them are inherently generators of violence and death, but society has valid grounds to make things illegal which cause the type of destruction caused by drugs.
I can make a biblical argument against “pharmakeia” (i.e., drug-induced trance channeling demons) but I'm limiting my argument to secular grounds here. The secular grounds should be sufficient on their own even for those who make no profession of religious faith.
“There is no such thing as a moral foreign policy or standing up for what is right with folks like Paul.”
He thinks HE’S right. One of the things that’s so scary about RP is that not only does he know nothing about Islam (I don’t say “radical” Islam anymore when among friends like on here), but he doesn’t even care to learn. He’s such a stubborn old coot that as President, he likely wouldn’t even listen to the intel, facts and knowledge given to him - he’d just stick to his ignorant, blind ideology - endangering us all, opening us up to certain attack. Just like The Wan in charge now.
Our most dangerous enemies are rooting for RP to be President every bit as much as they were for BHO in ‘08.
Stateside, drugs were legal, widely-available and used by a limited segment of the population until the Harrison Act of 1914 ushered in the era of drug prohibition in America. Alcohol prohibition followed six years later, in 1920.
Given your username, perhaps some consideration of why the Chinese tried to stamp out the corrupting influence of Western promotion of opium dens might be in order?
(FYI, I'm an avid China watcher, rather than Chinese. Zhang Fei was a Chinese military official who lived roughly 2000 years ago. He was killed by two subordinates a couple of decades after the Roman Emperor Commodus (of Gladiator fame) was strangled to death). Opium was first introduced to China during the Tang dynasty, just past the middle of the first millenium. In other words, its use in China predated the West's discovery of a seaward route to the Orient by 1000 years. Propaganda issued by Western missionaries and Chinese officials blamed opium for hindering China's development. In reality, Chinese immigrants all over the world flourished despite easier access to opium than in China. Western missionaries fulminated against opium for the same reasons they inveighed against adultery, fornication, alcohol and so on. Chinese officials did it because (1) they needed a scapegoat for their failures and (2) opium imports were superior to the domestic stuff, such than China was beginning to run a large trade deficit. Efforts to stamp out opium use died down after China managed to replicate superior foreign strains of the opium poppy and became a net exporter of opium.
Amusingly enough, Mao used the opium trade to finance his war against the Nationalist Party. I'd say he stamped out the opium trade after the Communist victory for the same reason that he stamped out religion - the Communist Party is a jealous god and decrees that its subjects should have no other god aside from the Party and its self-anointed prophets in the form of senior party officials.
I've dealt with the consequences, up close and personal, of illegal drugs on the streets destroying communities where I have lived. Maybe you think marijuana is innocuous and not a gateway drug to worse stuff. You're wrong, but let's grant the point for a moment. Show me a logical reason to legalize marijuana while keeping heroin and methamphetamine illegal. If you think heroin and meth don't generate crimes because of the behaviors they produce, you need to spend some time dealing with a methhead.
I know personally of people who've been addicted to drugs, gambling, alcohol, etc and the kinds of things they do under the influence. The problem with making these things illegal is strictly practical - illegality breeds gangsterism and requires massive police resources that would be better devoted to solving crimes involving theft, murder, rape and so on.
Illegal drugs are illegal for a reason. They change people's behavior in ways that are socially damaging. The worst of them are inherently generators of violence and death, but society has valid grounds to make things illegal which cause the type of destruction caused by drugs.
Illegal drugs are illegal because of the Harrison Act of 1914. Illegal does not mean unavailable. Note that people who want to get drugs can get them. I have always been able to purchase drugs without difficulty stateside, although I've never been tempted to buy them. The illegality of drugs does nothing to deny access to even the poorest of the poor, who steal or sell their food stamp allotments to buy drugs. What the rest of us taxpayers get is sky-high public safety bills, along with degraded public safety because resources diverted towards dealing with trafficking investigations (30% of felonies) and drug-related gang wars (2/3 - 3/4 of murders are apparently drug gang-related).
I can make a biblical argument against “pharmakeia” (i.e., drug-induced trance channeling demons) but I'm limiting my argument to secular grounds here. The secular grounds should be sufficient on their own even for those who make no profession of religious faith.
I think if we're going to make laws concerning personal conduct, we should stick to the 10 Commandments.
When I say we could have avoided fighting Hitler, I don't mean we could have avoided naval clashes, given that Hitler's declaration of war was the beginning of unrestricted submarine warfare against American shipping. I mean we could have avoided landing troops and equipment in North Africa and Europe and sending wave of wave of bombers over Europe (~50% death rates out of all aircrews that served), which accounted for the vast majority of the 300K dead we lost in the North African and European theaters. The rationale for staying out except when directly attacked would be the same as our rationale for not intervening during the Napoleonic Wars and various other 19th century European conflicts.
The history of opium in China is complex and I'm very much aware that there's more than enough blame to go around. You've pointed out some of the key issues.
I sense we may have some fundamental disagreements about the role of government in punishing vice and promoting virtue. That will likely be a debate for most if not all of our lives between libertarians and Christian conservatives in the Republican Party. It's not even that simple — Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee represent largely consistent poles of a spectrum on which most people fall somewhere in the middle. Lots of libertarian-leaning conservatives favor a limited government that is supportive of morality, and there are lots of conservative Christians who do not trust a government to promote the Second Table of the Law if it does not affirm the First Table.
I believe drugs and drug users need to be stamped out. Obviously you're not in agreement with me. I'm guessing we agree on a lot of other things or neither of us would be on Free Republic, so perhaps we'd both be best advised to focus on points where we agree.
Don't get me wrong. I'm neither libertine nor libertarian. I think drug addiction is not a good thing. My objection to current drug laws lies in the fact that our century long (1914 - present) experiment with drug prohibition has (1) not stamped out drug distribution channels, (2) not made drugs scarce, or (3) not made the prices prohibitive for all but the rich. What it has succeeded in doing is (1) led to huge amounts in collateral damage, with drug-related murders accounting for anywhere between 2/3 and 3/4 of all homicides and (2) sucked up significant amounts of police and prison resources, with 30% of felons originating from drug-related cases. Police resources are fungible - resources spent investigating drug cases are resources not spent checking out murders, robberies, thefts, etc.
Our present system of prison time for drug dealing isn't draconian enough to prevent even the poorest of the poor from getting regular access to drugs. After his victory in 1949, Mao showed (if we believe Chinese statistics) that there was a way to stamp out opium usage in China - he executed drug distributors and addicts alike. I don't think we have to go that far to reduce drug usage stateside. A lot of Asian countries have the death penalty for those involved in the drug distribution trade, defined as anyone with more than perhaps a dozen doses in his possession. If we implemented the death penalty for drug dealing, we could simultaneously reduce availability while bringing prices to levels unaffordable except for the rich. The problem, of course, is that there's no public support, stateside, for imposing the death penalty on drug dealers, let alone the fast track processing for drug crimes that leads from arrest, indictment, conviction, sentencing, appeals to execution in two years that some Asian countries have implemented.
So we're back to square one, with a non-working drug prohibition system in which drugs are ubiquitous and within reach of even the destitute. As someone who favors a death penalty for drug dealing (and therefore no libertarian), I don't see how we square the circle. I think it's time we bid farewell to drug prohibition, for more or less the same reasons that we repealed alcohol prohibition - it's an expensive failure that diverts law enforcement resources from investigations of other crimes. For once, I'd like to hear of cops who do more to investigate burglaries than merely process documents for insurance claims.
It's important to study history, especially in understanding a nation like China whose leaders think in terms of centuries and millenia rather than just a few years, and I respect someone like you who does so.
It's obvious that China is likely to become one of the major competitors of the United States in the coming century. I hope that competition stays in the realm of economics and does not become military, but in either case we need to know and understand China if we're going to be prepared for the future.
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