Congressman Ron Paul is the leading advocate for freedom in our nation’s capital. As a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Dr. Paul tirelessly works for limited constitutional government, low taxes, free markets, and a return to sound monetary policies. He is known among his congressional colleagues and his constituents for his consistent voting record. Dr. Paul never votes for legislation unless the proposed measure is expressly authorized by the Constitution.In the words of former Treasury Secretary William Simon, Dr. Paul is the “one exception to the Gang of 535” on Capitol Hill.
Ron Paul was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Gettysburg College and the Duke University School of Medicine, before proudly serving as a flight surgeon in the U.S. Air Force during the 1960s. He and his wife Carol moved to Texas in 1968, where he began his medical practice in Brazoria County. As a specialist in obstetrics/gynecology, Dr. Paul has delivered more than 4,000 babies. He and Carol, who reside in Lake Jackson, Texas, are the proud parents of five children and have 17 grandchildren.
While serving in Congress during the late 1970s and early 1980s, Dr. Paul’s limited-government ideals were not popular in Washington. In 1976, he was one of only four Republican congressmen to endorse Ronald Reagan for president.
During that time, Congressman Paul served on the House Banking committee, where he was a strong advocate for sound monetary policy and an outspoken critic of the Federal Reserve’s inflationary measures. He was an unwavering advocate of pro-life and pro-family values. Dr. Paul consistently voted to lower or abolish federal taxes, spending and regulation, and used his House seat to actively promote the return of government to its proper constitutional levels. In 1984, he voluntarily relinquished his House seat and returned to his medical practice.
Dr. Paul returned to Congress in 1997 to represent the 14th congressional district of Texas. He presently serves on the House Committee on Financial Services and the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. He continues to advocate a dramatic reduction in the size of the federal government and a return to constitutional principles.
Congressman Paul’s consistent voting record prompted one of his congressional colleagues to say, “Ron Paul personifies the Founding Fathers’ ideal of the citizen-statesman. He makes it clear that his principles will never be compromised, and they never are.” Another colleague observed, “There are few people in public life who, through thick and thin, rain or shine, stick to their principles. Ron Paul is one of those few.”
Brief Overview of Congressman Paul’s Record:
He has never voted to raise taxes. He has never voted for an unbalanced budget. He has never voted for a federal restriction on gun ownership. He has never voted to raise congressional pay. He has never taken a government-paid junket. He has never voted to increase the power of the executive branch.
He voted against the Patriot Act. He voted against regulating the Internet. He voted against the Iraq war.
He does not participate in the lucrative congressional pension program. He returns a portion of his annual congressional office budget to the U.S. treasury every year.
Congressman Paul introduces numerous pieces of substantive legislation each year, probably more than any single member of Congress.
Information above copied directly from the following website on 7/6/07:
When it comes to foreign policy, Ron Paul would merely shift the nation from one foreign policy extreme to another. His Neo-isolationist philosophy would lead to a wholesale abandonment of the nation's critical overseas interests. Rather than reducing the nation's geopolitical risk exposure, such an approach would increase it. The years leading up to World War II offer powerful evidence of the inherent shortcomings of such a posture.
During the height of the Cold War, Ron Paul was advocating unilateral U.S. nuclear disarmament and a withdrawal from NATO. Had the U.S. eliminated its nuclear weapons, it would have been left at the mercy of a Soviet Union that, at the time, enjoyed a superior conventional capacity and a powerful nuclear arsenal. The U.S. deterrent would simply have ceased to exist. Had the U.S. withdrawn from NATO, the door would have been opened for a westward advance of the Soviet empire. All said, the Cold War might well have come to a very bad conclusion if the Soviets exploited the self-inflicted disarmament that Mr. Paul espoused.
As the U.S. moves into the 2008 campaign season, big foreign policy challenges lurk. Radical Islamist terrorism, which is not just a simple consequence of "blowback" but also an ideology based on perceptions of history that predate the U.S. founding, presents dangers to the U.S. and its allies. The U.S. will need to rebuild its relationship with Russia if it is to avoid complications that could arise from Russian "counterbalancing." It will need to ensure that Iran cannot dominate the vital oil-producing regions of the Middle East. It will need to cooperate with China so that China's continuing evolution will be peaceful and East Asia could remain a stable and prosperous region. It may need to lend covert or even overt support to Pakistan's government. If Pakistan's government were to fall to radical pro-Taliban elements, the adverse ramifications of that development would likely be as significant as those following the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979.
Active diplomacy and robust engagement will be required to bring about a good outcome on all these fronts. Military strength will be an important deterrent.
Given the nature and magnitude of the challenges confronting it, the U.S. can ill-afford to compensate for the excesses of Neoconservatism by embracing the hazards of Neo-isolationism. Such an outcome would undermine critical U.S. interests and national security.
by
Don (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 10 comments)
on Saturday, July 7, 2007 at 12:09:50 AM
don1 raises some interesting points, and his post is certainly food for thought, but I don't think he's exactly on target with the entirety of his analysis.
First we must note that the executive branch does not exist in a governmental vacuum; therefore, whatever policy changes a Ron Paul administration chooses to implement will be enacted gradually if at all. Paul will have to tame a wild congress and reign in a massive bureaucracy before his policy changes have any real, noticeable effect.
In other words, Paul's presidency won't isolate us from world affairs overnight (of course, isolating us from world affairs has never been something Paul has suggested he would do). What it will do is start us down the road to a more reasonable and balanced foreign policy based on the understanding that America is not meant to be an empire.
As for Islamic militancy, sure it's a real problem, and it's also true that they have motivations for jihad completely aside from our intervention in Middle Eastern affairs. What's important about Paul's foreign policy, though, is that it would deprive Islamic miliatants of their number one propaganda weapon: Our military presence in the Middle East and our military/economic backing of the country of Israel.
As for the Russians, we must look at why our relations have deteriorated so greatly in recent years. The reason is quite apparent to those who are paying attention: Our current foreign policy has led us to intervene in the affairs of and conduct military/espionage operations in countries that have traditionally been firmly within the Russian sphere of influence.
Does anyone here actually believe that we can improve our relationship with Russia by agitating Georgia against them, fomenting a coup d'etat in the Ukraine, rewarding anti-Russian sentiment in the Baltic States, and announcing that we intend to build a new European missile defense shield by stationing weaponry inside former Eastern Bloc countries? Somehow, I just don't think it's going to work.
As for the rest, I see little there that couldn't be solved with good trade relations and diplomacy even better than it could with the threat of preemptive military strikes.
No, the current foreign policy is an unmitigated disaster. That is plain to see. The current crop of Democratic candidates have offered us no real alternative. The Republican cadidates, with one notable exception, haven't either.
The only one who has is Ron Paul, and his election will surely get us moving toward a more sound foreign policy, but there is no need to fear that on the day of his inauguration "isolationism" will take hold and cut us off from the rest of the world. That sounds a littl bit like fearmongering to me.
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Roger Kent (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 14 comments)
on Saturday, July 7, 2007 at 1:42:42 AM
If I consider Ron Paul, I will consider how he stands on a national health policy, a real graduated federal tax system, free Education through at least the first two years of college, social security, national libraries accessible on internet, race relations, immigration, rebuilding America's interstate highway system, universal draft, and other things. The Iraq War is just one of many issues we face. We have to rebuild this country long after the Iraq War is over. If he is wrong on a majority of those things, he is wrong.
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pratliff94 (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 940 comments)
on Saturday, July 7, 2007 at 9:11:54 AM
Members of Congress and members of state legislatures vote on thousands of bills and resolutions. My support or opposition to politicians will not be based upon the largest total number of issues in agreement. The neoconservatives are promoting endless wars and the totalitarian takeover of countries. From Congressman Bob Filner (Democrat-California and a member of the Progressive Caucus) to Congressman Tom Tancredo (Republican-Colorado and a Republican candidate for President), the neoconservatives are totalitarians. Filner and Tancredo are co-chairpersons of an Iran caucus in Congress. They support the totalitarian takeover of Iran by the Iranian MEK (MKO, PMOI, NCRI, Rajavi Cult, or Pol Pot of Iran). While Filner and Tancredo disagree on many major political issues, they agree on being totalitarians. Why would anyone simply sum all of the issues with which they agree? Neoconservatives are totalitarians, regardless of their political party labels.
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Paul Sheldon Foote (8 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 40 comments)
on Saturday, July 7, 2007 at 2:45:46 PM
. . . but I actually recognize Ron Paul both for who and what he is, and therefore could never, would never support him for the presidency.
Paul's libertarianism is little more than a partiuclarly virulent, more mean-spirited form of the Republicanism that plagues this nation today.
Paul loathes many of the things that many of us have come to regard as fundamental aspects of our culture. His "free market" solutions have no room for a minimum wage, let alone the living wage we need to be talking about. His "free market" solutions have no room for Medicare, let alone the national single-payer healthcare system we need to be working toward. His "free market" solutions have no room for regulating and reigning in a corporate America that has clearly run amok, sending millions of American jobs overseas. Heck, his "free market" solutions don't even have room for Social Security. He was one of the very few people who, like George Bush, thought that privatizing Social Security was a great idea.
I applaud Congressman Paul for opposing the Iraq War. I wish he'd done it for the right reasons, as opposed to the isolationism he so fervently espouses.
For some reason (I suspect desperation), Ron Paul has captured the curiosity of a certain segment of the progressive audience. I sincerely hope those progressives will take a long look at Rep. Paul and drop him like a hot rock. There is simply nothing progressive about him.
Simply put, Ron Paul looks refreshing because of the people around him. With creeps and thugs like Romney and Giuliani, McCain and Brownback, Huckabee and Tancredo for comparison and contrast, Paul looks like a maverick and a free thinker. Pull him out into the real world, however, and he begins to wither like a vampire in sunshine.
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Bob Kincaid (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 41 comments)
on Saturday, July 7, 2007 at 9:15:40 AM
Don1 said: "Rather than reducing the nation's geopolitical risk exposure, such an [non-interventionist] approach would increase it. The years leading up to World War II offer powerful evidence of the inherent shortcomings of such a posture."
First off, claiming that the U.S. had a non-interventionist foreign policy in the lead up to World War II exhibits a lack of factual knowledge of the subject. Japan did not just throw darts on a map to pick out the U.S.A. as a target. The U.S. and Japanese empires clashed as a result of their seeking influence in East Asia.
The U.S. government decided to intervene in an Asian conflict (between Japan and China) through a war embargo. Whatever the reason for the embargo was, it had no relation to the protection of Americans (isn't that the government's MAIN job, after all?). Why was our military in the Phillippines? It surely wasn't there to protect Americans.
Such is not to excuse Japan's murderous imperialism, but to expose the oft-repeated fallacy that we were "non-interventionist" before World War II. We were already deeply involved in Asia
And the idea that we would be less safe without our military everywhere has no basis in reality. Nations that have been geographically placed between warring parties, like Switzerland and Sweden, have managed to stay out of wars due to non-intervention. They have also managed to provide an adequate deterrent for other armies. They did so without the gargantuan military establishment that we have here and without two oceans separating them from any potential military rival.
How about the "inherent shortcomings" of their posture? A non-interventionist foreign policy, which Ron Paul advocates, would not waste American lives and money like our current foreign policy. By current, I don't just mean under Bush.
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Garry Cobb (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 11 comments)
on Saturday, July 7, 2007 at 10:21:56 AM
Putting aside my point about the isolationism that preceded World War II, here's what historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. wrote:
Isolationism set the terms of foreign policy debate. Franklin D. Roosevelt had no illusions about the threats to peace posed by Nazi Germany and imperial Japan... [H]e could not, for all his popularity control an isolationist Congress when it came to foreign policy. Congress...passed rigid neutrality legislation that, by denying the president authority to discriminate between aggressor and victim, nullified any American role in restraining aggression. In sum, it put American foreign policy in a straitjacket during the critical years before World War II.
In the complex period of history in which the U.S. finds itself in the early 21st century, when economies are interdependent and the nation's critical interests extend well beyond its borders, Ron Paul's neo-Isolationism would represent little more than the wholesale abandonment of the nation's critical overseas interests. It would be nothing less than an abdication of foreign policy. Far from making the U.S. more secure or more prosperous, it would disconnect it from the world at large, undermine the global equilibrium that can provide reasonable stability, and signal dangerous weakness to would-be aggressors.
Mr. Paul's approach to foreign policy was employed in the years running up to World War II. It was a catastrophic failure.
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Don (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 10 comments)
on Saturday, July 7, 2007 at 11:03:48 AM
And labeling Ron Paul's foreign policy as "isolationist" is erroneous. He is a non-interventionist who advocates robust economic and diplomatic engagement with other countries instead of military (i.e. destructive) engagement.
But back to the pre-World War II period, picking sides in foreign wars and enacting war embargoes is intervention. The historian you quoted does not address that at all in the quote you mentioned. I can quote numerous historians as well as writers/political figures of the time who do address the reality that empire, not "isolationism" was the pre-World War II policy.
We had turned the Phillippines into a colony which had no security benefit for Americans, but threatened the Japanese. We sided with China in their war with Japan, which had no security benefit for Americans. Both of those stances along with Japanese imperialism in the area led to America's entry into World War II.
Say what you'd like about the merits of the policies, but to call those policies part of a "non-interventionist" or "isolationist" policy is ridiculous.
You said: "Far from making the U.S. more secure or more prosperous, it would disconnect it from the world at large, undermine the global equilibrium that can provide reasonable stability, and signal dangerous weakness to would-be aggressors."
Actually, the current foreign policy of intervention is bankrupting the country, creating instability and hatred of Americans, and continues to take on a life of its own by feeding the military-industrial complex.
Refraining from frivolous military interventions that are of no security benefit won't "disconnect" America from the world. That is a canard parroted by the current political establishment.
You also said: "Mr. Paul's approach to foreign policy was employed in the years running up to World War II. It was a catastrophic failure. "
You can ignore the facts, but that does not make your conclusions correct. The fact of the matter is that empire building, not non-intervention, was the disastrous policy in place before World War II. Though not as blatant as the interventions of Woodrow Wilson (who gleefully sacrificed about 150,000 Americans for his own utopian goals), the policy leading up to World War II was one of widespread intervention.
I find it funny and sad that sending Americans off to die for some cause other than the security of Americans is an idea that is continually praised. In the same fashion, actions such as embargoes, having troops in 159 countries and territories and "regime change" are promoted regardless of their well-documented detriments to our security.
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Garry Cobb (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 11 comments)
on Saturday, July 7, 2007 at 11:57:36 AM
With all due respect, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. was among the most eminent historians of the 20th century. I'm comfortable with his judgment concerning the isolationism that preceded World War II.
With regard to the current neoconservative approach, I don't disagree that it has caused harm. Although Iraq was widely believed to have possessed weapons of mass destruction, declassified information also revealed that the threat Iraq posed was not imminent. Therefore, the tradition criteria that defined U.S. preemption was violated. Furthermore, neoconservatism assumed that military power and "regime change" could transform authoritarian societies into democratic ones. Democratic societies are the result of political, economic, and legal institutions. In the absence of such institutions, there is no democracy. As a consequence, "regime change" did not produce democracy in Iraq.
However, just because neoconservatism caused damage to U.S. interests and relationships does not mean that the nation should now lurch to the other extreme and embrace neo-isolationism. Isolationism has already been tried with disastrous results. It does not deserve another chance. Instead, a pragmatic Realist policy of the kind that defined the U.S. foreign policy from President Truman through Reagan would be much better. Such an approach would focus on safeguarding critical U.S. interests, encourage diplomatic engagement and collaboration on a bilateral basis and through enduring alliances such as NATO, promote trade liberalization, and maintain a strong U.S. military deterrent.
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Don (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 10 comments)
on Saturday, July 7, 2007 at 4:34:05 PM
For yet another opinion, here's what former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wrote of the pre-World War II period:
America's journey from involvement in the First World War to active participation in the second proved to be a long one--interrupted as it was by the nation's about face to isolationism... The America of the 1920s and 1930s rejected even its own doctrine of collective security lest it lead to involvement in the quarrels of distant, bellicose societies...
In January 1938, the House of Representatives nearly passed a constitutional amendment requiring a national referendum for declarations of war except in the event of an invasion of the United States...
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Don (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 10 comments)
on Saturday, July 7, 2007 at 4:57:02 PM
Henry Kissinger had a distinguished career at Harvard University prior to his public service. It was useful to note that Kissinger and Schelesinger, both of different political persuasions, reached the same conclusion about the pre-World War II years: isolationism had become the preeminent approach to U.S. foreign policy. Dispassionate analysis of the evidence could only lead to that outcome.
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Don (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 10 comments)
on Sunday, July 8, 2007 at 10:21:36 PM
...could only lead the conclusion that Roosevelt and Stimson provoking intentionally provoking Japan through economic warfare cannot in the slightest be viewed as "isolationist".
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Roger Kent (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 14 comments)
on Monday, July 9, 2007 at 4:42:55 PM
One additional reference proving the pre-World War II isolationist policy of the U.S. Here's what Raymond Leslie Buell, President of the Foreign Policy Association explained in December 1938:
Then came the depression, the world-wide decline intrade, the spread of unrest in Europe and Asia, the rise of Adolf Hitler. The rest of the world seemed to be in a hopeless mess, and the people of this country turned to complete isolation. They were determined to keep out of other people's troubles.
He also asserted that Americans were beginning to abandon the "illusions that the United States can be made safe from war by neutrality legislation." Finally, he advised, "Today this country can no longer indulge in illusions. In a world where the balance of power has been profoundly altered by the Munich agreement, which showed up the weaknesses of Britain and France and the strength of Nazi Germany, the United States must take its stand."
In short, some of those who experienced the isolationism of the pre-World War II period recognized that such a policy had not made the United States safer. Security through non-interventionism was an "illusion."
Those who despair of the disaster the Iraq intervention has been--and it has been-- and who are seduced by appeals that non-interventionism is the solution to avoid such future disasters, should keep in mind the previous experience with just such an approach. History provides the important lesson that such an approach offered no security. It merely created a vacuum from U.S. disengagement in which the balance of power shifted toward Nazi Germany. History's lesson should not be ignored.
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Don (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 10 comments)
on Monday, July 9, 2007 at 8:48:07 AM
Ron Paul is not a progressive. Ron Paul is a member of the libertarian right. If you want a true progressive, then you can note how Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul have worked together in Congress and have been some of a very small number of members of Congress voting against the neoconservatives for years. If you support the libertarian left, then you need to condemn fake progressives (such as Congressman Bob Filner) who are really totalitarians.
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Paul Sheldon Foote (8 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 40 comments)
on Saturday, July 7, 2007 at 3:17:25 PM
The existing sham democracy is rotten from the core, the Republicans are neo-fascists hellbent on eradicating the Constitution, the Democrats are thoroughly compromised and are only slightly better at pretending NOT to be killers and globalists. Washington is Israeli occupied territory and the nation is careening towards both an economic collapse and a globally catastrophic attack on Iran - very likely with nuclear weapons. The Rapture Bus is heading off the cliff and we are all on it!
The Bush administration's disgraceful commutation of the traitor Scooter Liebowitz's jail term confirms that this is no longer a nation of laws.
Our judicial system is no longer functional and has become illigetimate due to the infiltration of extremist ideologues like Alito and Roberts - and they are only getting warmed up. The Wall Street looters are selling off the country like slumlords bleeding a property, our borders are porous, the middle class is under siege, the tax structure is a joke, the media has become nothing more than state sanctioned mind control and the majority of Americans are more concerned with who will be the next American Idol than in participating in any sort of legitimate discourse on the grave issues that affect their lives.
With the utter failure of the current Democratic party to function as a viable opposition to the crushing iron fist of a fascist police state I can see no other alternative other than Ron Paul and I will take his vision of a reigned in government over one that actively seeks to undermine me and the rest of America any day of the week.
The lunacy has to stop and it is going to take a unification of all Americans sick of the two party scam in order to prevent the coming cataclysm.
That is why Ron Paul is gaining popularity by the day and why the Democratic party is going to implode right along with their more authoritarian but equally morally devoid partners in crime the Republicans.
As William Rivers Pitt recently wrote in his piece "A Time To Reap":
There is something happening today in America. With the right kind of ears, you can hear it in the sound of millions of brows slowly furrowing in anger and disgust. It feels like those tense moments just before the eruption of a summer thunderstorm, those moments when the air is electric, the ozone reek of spent lightning fills the world, and you know something very loud is about to happen.
What is happening, what can be heard and smelled and sensed all across the land, is the cresting wave of rage, betrayal and fury that is, finally, roaring across the shores of our collective American heart. After more than six years of lies, theft, graft, corruption, manipulation and misconduct, just about every living person within these borders finds themselves today gripped by the slow seethe, directed inward as much as outward, of one who has come around to see just how much of a fool they've been played for.
There are numbers to argue the reality of what is happening: The latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll has 81% of Americans believing this country to be very much on the wrong track. Put simply, four out of every five people nowadays have that furrowed brow, that sense of betrayal, that slow seethe.
It is a Becoming, this thing, or perhaps an Awakening. It is very real, and is all around us, and it feels like something very loud is about to happen.
Can you hear it yet?
by
Ed Encho (6 articles, 8 quicklinks, 54 diaries, 348 comments)
on Saturday, July 7, 2007 at 10:46:46 AM
Who knew that this place was so popular with globalists and big-government socialists!?
It's frightening how many people just want to scrap the Constitution and ignore the advice of our Founding Fathers, and it really makes me sad to see how many people have completely forgotten that America was built on self-reliance and independence. It's amazing that it only took about thirty years to turn us into a bunch of fat, lazy, dependent wimps suckling at the teet of the welfare state even as we offer up our children as cannon fodder for the empire.
You people scare the hell out of me.
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Roger Kent (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 14 comments)
on Saturday, July 7, 2007 at 12:34:55 PM
The Republican Party has been wounded and betrayed by the religious fanatics who are committed to taking away our freedom and ruling over us and spending America into bankruptcy while they do it. But there is still hope for the Republican Party so long as they have decent and principled persons such as Ron Paul.
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fra59e (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 4 comments)
on Saturday, July 7, 2007 at 12:43:32 PM
Any hope of the Judas Democrats actually providing a semblance of a decent national health care system that deprives the bloodsucking bastards in the insurance/pharmaceutical industrial complex of their cut is both naive and moronic. There may currently be a movie SiCKO out that will serve to show Americans how they are getting screwed but under the current looter crony capitalist system (it is decidedly NOT free market capitalism) there is only one certainty and it is that the corrupt corporatists, the blood barters, the Wall Street money cartelists and their whores in Congress will rapidly close ranks to protect their rotting system.
Time for a fresh start, this entire country has been looted by the oligarchs and the imperialists who treat citizens as mere nuisances and chattel.
The purge needs to start NOW because this filthy and corrupt monopoly capitalism that eats away at all that is decent about America and uses our young as cannon fodder in illegal wars of empire needs to be relegated to the same scrap heap where Stalinist communism landed.
Time to set things right again
EE
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Ed Encho (6 articles, 8 quicklinks, 54 diaries, 348 comments)
on Saturday, July 7, 2007 at 12:50:02 PM
I sincerely beg to differ. Paul is a "libertarian," and therefore, by definition, a "corporatist." The libertarian right, while espousing "personal" freedom, extends those freedoms to Corporate America at will. The reductions in corporate taxation, the right-wing's "yassuh, boss" approach to regulation of Corporate America are all a siginficant part of the problems that have descended upon America in the first decade of the 21st Century.
To the individual who suggested that Paul is somehow capable of addressing the healthcare crisis, one wonders just how that would work. He doesn't even see healthcare as a basic human right, as does the rest of the "developed" world. What would Ron Paul do to make sure our children had adequate pre- and post-natal care? What would he do to make sure healthcare is available and affordable to the millions of Americans who work for a living in the American free market miracle, but can't go to the doctor when they're sick. How would Ron Paul treat the middle class Americans who have health insurance but are devastated by the co-pays and deductibles from a catastrophic illness? Cut their taxes? That's like offering peanut butter and crackers to a man dying of thirst.
What would Ron Paul do to Social Security? At the end of the day, as a right-wing libertarian, he doesn't even believe it should exist. Gonna turn Granny loose in the pits of the stock market, Ron?
And for heaven's sake! Stop with the "Big Government" motif. This is a big country. With big problems. It will take a big government to solve them. After all, we saw what "small government" did in responding to Katrina, didn't we? "Small government" gave us the failure of Iraq, too. After all, that's why the military can't deliver its own mail or cook its own meals anymore: it got "small." Small government is responsible for for the mess at Walter Reed. After all, the same folks who gave us all those problems are the ones who nodded approvingly when Grover Norquist said he wanted to make the federal government "small enough that we can drown it in a bathtub." Ron Paul is one of those "small government" guys. We can't afford another Katrina. We can't afford Ron Paul.
"Big government" is one right-wing talking point that I'm pushing back on. What a load of crap the Republican "big government" hoax is!
Some people around here seem to think that using bright background colors and making their text gigantic will distract us from the fact that they're wrong.
I reckon I'll try out the bright background thing, even though I'm right.
First off, Bob Kincaid here confuses political stance, which is as "paleoconservative" as it is "libertarian" with corporatism, which Ron Paul has actively decried. He's even described our current situation as quasi-fascist and spoken out against the influence of big business on the government.
No, despite Bob's scaremongering, the reality is that Ron Paul has repeatedly stated that one of the few essential and legitimate functions of government is to protect individuals when other individuals (or corporations acting as individuals) will harm them in some way.
As for the ridiculous mess that is social security, I for one (and I know I'm not alone) am sick and tired of paying a significant portion of my income into a system that is broken and that promises benefits I will never see. Bob here rails against "right-wingers", never once stopping to think that it is social conservatives who want to preserve what's left of our traditional structure. People like Bob here are so used to suckling at the teet of the nanny state that they just a few short decades ago we used to take care of each other instead of depending on the government to do it.
Bob foolishly drags up the nightmare that is/was Walter Reed, insisting that that's a legacy of "small government"! How patently ridiculous. In what way is our -- in many ways broken -- VA system a legacy of "small government? As a veteran myself, I can tell you that the VA is a bureaucratic mess where it can take months at a time even to get an initial consultation. There's nothing "small" about the VA.
No, the problems at Walter Reed are the result of a bunch of capitol hill fatcats who send our sons and daughters off to war on false evidence and then turn their backs on them when they get wounded. By the way, that's not something you'll find Ron Paul doing, if you examine his statements and his record.
Bob here has the audacity to offer up trite platitudes about Dr. Ron Paul not believing that healthcare is a "basic human right". Bob even presumes to speak for the entire industrialized world. His hubristic folly would be laughable if it wasn't so pathetic.
Dr. Paul is a physician, OB/GYN who has personally delivered over 4,000 babies.. He has taken the hypocratic oath to do no harm and help people when he can, and Bob here thinks he's going to throw granny to the wolves when she's no longer productive. He couldn't be more wrong.
In Dr. Paul's medical practice, he never once accepted medicare or medicaid; however, the area where his practice is found is not an overly wealthy one. Dr. Paul stood by his principles of not taking taxpayer money to practice medicine by offering treatment for FREE or at a SEVERELY REDUCED COST. Now that's a man who knows healthcare and is qualified to speak on how our current system can be improved. What are Bob Kincaid's qualifications?
The kind of healthcare Bob here wants isn't the kind we had before Big Pharma and the insurance companies climbed in bed with Uncle Sam. No, he wants more of that, only he also wants to reinstate the old medical practice of 'bleeding'. Sure, it used to be that if you were sick, they'd drain some of your blood hoping to bleed the sickness out of you. That's kind of like what Bob Kincaid wants the government to do, only he wants to bleed you through taxes to pay for the health care you can't afford. It's ridiculous, and it won't work.
Bob even goes on to drag up Hurricane Katrina! Bob's really fishing here, but he ain't catchin' jack. In Bob's world, the Katrina disaster was the fault of the federal government, when in fact many of the deaths and much of the suffering could have been avoided if the people of New Orleans and the government of Louisiana had done something of their own initiative instead of sitting around like helpless babies waiting for the federal government to come to their rescue! Man, if I thought my life were dependent on FEMA or some other giant federal bureaucracy...
Yep, Bob's just another socialist who forgets that this "big country" was built before the New Deal and the Great Society, before the government started hyping up its own importance with scaremongering propaganda like "The War on Poverty", "The War on Drugs", "The War on Terror", and -- coming soon to a tax form near you -- "The War on Illness". These are all just a bunch of pathetic excuses that the government and big business use to try to convince us that we can't take care of ourselves and that we should just give them more money and more power to shelter us under their 'beneficent' wing.
The smart folks ain't buyin' it, but apparently there are more than a few suckers out there.
by
Roger Kent (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 14 comments)
on Sunday, July 8, 2007 at 4:48:47 PM
