Ron Paul — HNBP

Well, it didn’t take long for someone to bring up Ron Paul in my post on being liberal. In all candour and with no offense intended to my readers who support him, let me put this as gently as I am able: screw Ron Paul.

He led on his support base of conspiracy-obsessed crypto-racist neoconfederate libertarians with a massive, almost cultlike psuedo-Republican campaign which, to all appearances served mainly to boost “money bomb” income and book sales on a half-baked compilation of old essays, while providing little to no guidance at all to their frothy, wild-eyed PR brainstorming. (Blimps in winter, anyone? NASCAR? The date of the march?)

Ron Paul voted against net neutrality, civil rights, and DC voting rights, stands against the 14th and 16th Amendments, and opposes government regulations concerning food production, telecom standards, environmental conservation, and other forms of protection for consumers and environment. His stand on the war arises mainly from his thinly-disguised paranoia concerning “New World Order” conspiracy theories, so while he occasionally happens to mouth something sounding like common sense on issues of civil liberties, Ron Paul is otherwise well-deserving of the many crazies who have flocked to his banner.

This is all without even mentioning the infamous racist survivalism newsletter that he ran for decades, earning him significant income. He tried to dodge the accusation by saying he rarely wrote or even read his own publication, blaming a ghost-writing staffer whom he would not identify, even though the newsletter extensively referred to him with first person accounts and experiences. So he was either a bumbling,incompetent newsletter publisher who couldn’t even handle his own lying writers — or he was a semi-Nazi racist who really did write denunciations of civil rights, Martin Luther King, Jews, and Abraham Lincoln to appeal to his political fanbase. Either way, not fit to be president, or even to be a congressman.

But still, in the end, despite his archaic economic liberalism, shamelessly corporatist anarcho-capitalism, un-nuanced selective constitutional literalism, and unapologetic conspiracy-driven paranoia, I fully support Ron Paul in his run for the Republican candidacy, and I encourage him to keep the “Ron Paul Revolution” going, right up to November. I’m sure Senators Obama and Clinton feel the same way. Go Ron!

Comments

Bobber says:

2008-03-14 at 21:56

With all due respect, you seem to have read and listened to everyone but the real guy. I don’t know if I agree with Dr. Paul’s vote on civil rights but the objections he raises to it are worth considering.

So Obama is not a racist in view of the words of his pastor? You’ve got to be kidding. This is the guy who married him and who Obama was pastored by for 20 years??

No, screw Obama!
Paulo says:

2008-03-14 at 21:58

Lew Rockwell? The guy who runs the Mises Institute which draws on the philosophy of that lunatic anti-Lincoln confederate Rothbard that Ron Paul likes so much?

The objection that Ron Paul raises to civil rights is that “racism is a form of collectivism.” This is simply so much McCarthyist nonsense, and Ron Paul himself has slipped up and referred to African-Americans as a collective when he said he was “gaining ground with the blacks.” So much for not being a collectivist.

Barack Obama, a far more rational voice against the war, has been quick to refute his pastor’s words and cite where he disagrees. Has Ron Paul returned any of that neo-Nazi money yet?
COD says:

2008-03-14 at 22:06

I was pro-Paul when he was in the race not because I particularly agreed with all of his views, but because as President his ability to actually do anything would have been muted by Congress, but he would have shaken up the status quo and the status quo needs a good shaking. My current support for Obama is similar. The last thing the public education system needs is the billions Obama wants to throw at it, but of the 3 candidates, he is the only one even talking about trying to change how things work in Washington. McCain will be Bush III, and Hillary will be Clinton II. We already know how those stories go.
Bobber says:

2008-03-14 at 22:37

Very strange. Lew Rockwell has Paul‘s statement before congress. I rarely read Lew Rockwell. I don’t know anything about Rockwell’s background. I went to look for Paul’s statement and that’s where I found it. You are really playing games here. Someone finds a statement and you add on condemnation because it’s at a site that you don’t like. If you’re trying to persuade me, this is not the way to do it.
Bobber says:

2008-03-14 at 22:39

And Obama’s comments are not very compelling. If you heard the statements today (how could you not), the whole congregation was yelling and whooping it up. hard to believe they hadn’t heard this before. There’s also his wife’s recent statements and her comments in her thesis at Princeton. Very strange don’t you think?
tom says:

2008-03-15 at 19:40

Amen, Paulo. I’m not “a liberal,” (though you could have me on some issues) but I think Ron Paul is flat-out nuts. I would vote for nearly any Democrat over him. With the exception of Dennis Kucinich, in which case, I wouldn’t vote.