Why I like Ron Paul, too.
The Only Redhead in Taiwan isn't Ron Paul's only fan.
I don't like everything about Paul. I live in Taiwan, which he thinks is a part of China (I'm rabidly oppossed to this position). I'm pro-choice and I don't want to dismantle the Federal Reserve. I sort of like the idea of a gold standard, but more for emotional than rational reasons (one day, I would like to be Secretary of Shiny Things).
But for me, the most important issues in this campaign are:
1) rolling back the Executive authority Bush has claimed, and ending the indefinite detention of citizens / domestic spying / secret CIA prisons / military tribunals / shipping people to be tortured in allied countries. Not to mention restoring habeas corpus.
2) having a rational foreign policy that does not involve spending a trillion dollars a year to maintain an empire that only hurts our national interests.
And for me, a leftist, Paul is the only guy who cares about or talks about those two issues, so I feel I must support him. And when polls indicate 70% of Republican primary voters haven't heard enough about Paul to decide if they like him or not, is the problem really his platform or the lack of exposure?
Here's my favorite video of him.
3 comments:
Paul is anti-abortion, and anti-Church state separation. one of his closest friends is the Christian Fascist thinker Gary North, and Paul has also given speeches to racist hate groups. He's a "states rights" supporter, another code for racism. Conclusion: Paul won't do anything about the Empire or the war, it is just posturing, and he's just another fascist in sheep's clothing. Frankly, given who Paul runs with, I don't believe anything he says or does.
Michael
Michael,
It'd be nice to see some links. Not because I don't believe you, but because I'm interested in reading whatever it is you read.
I've already mentioned that a politician that sounds this good makes me think he's a fascist.
I've read some of the racist accusations concerning Paul, and I've found very little aside from an article that was published in a journal of which he was, I think, the editor.
There is this article that Paul wrote in 2002:
http://tinyurl.com/2qasup
Which echoes a lot of ideals argued by Amartya Sen (hardly a rabid racist) in the book Identity and Violence.
I too have some grave problems with Paul, but I'm not so quick to pass off everything else he says as "posturing" because of my disagreements.
Sorry. I'm not trying to convert you Michael, just putting this out there. It came in in my Salon.com daily email:
http://tinyurl.com/3cjl5t
The concluding paragraph:
"There is certainly ample ground to dispute Paul's view of the proper, constitutional role of the federal versus the state government in various matters. That is probably a worthwhile debate to have. But the claim that Paul's federalism is just an unprincipled ruse to promote some sort of neo-Nazi or racist agenda is plainly belied by such acts, and is exactly the type of dishonest smear designed to discredit his views without bothering to do the work to engage and refute them."
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