Although, I wouldn't mind an article about Kucinich's anti-choice past.

Umm. That is exactly what makes Ron Paul newsworthy, and Kucinich not newsworthy. Ron Paul is batshit crazy, and he is totally bucking the GOP talking points by strongly opposing the war. That is precisely why he is making the news. Duh.

When I first read about Ron Paul, I thought some of his positions were a little nuts myself. What most people find crazy is his stance on international organizations - e.g. withdrawing from the UN.

When I first heard this, I was like "woah", thats nutty. - But, the rationalle makes sense when you think about it. The arguement is that our participation in the UN has obligated us to participate in foreign wars (e.g. Korea, etc.)

A similar arguement can be made for the WTO. A lot of our treaty obligations impact our domestic industries. For example, we are obliged to either subsidize or not subsidize some of our agricultural products, etc., because our membership in the WTO obliges to make certain laws here at home.

Instead of all this, Paul argues that we should leave these sorts of regulations fundamentally to the will of the American people. That is, only the voters, not the government via treaty obligation, should decide domestic policies.

In this way, its not at all crazy. It combines the best of radical Jacksonian democracy with the finest ideals of Reagan. Its only viewed as crazy because nobody talks about these ideas any more.

That said, I think there is a real sense that policy solutions advocated by both Democrats and republicans are basically the same, e.g. use of government to address social problems. This idea isn't a bad one, but the perception that there isn't a lot of choice between parties had lead to a re-evaluation by many of Paul's positions.

Finally, the war is a huge issue. Its costing a LOT in terms of money and lives, and after 4 years it not clear what benefit we are gaining from it. Another reason why Paul is popular is because he opposes the war.

And I've never understood the bullshit about hating treaties and fetishizing sovereignty. You give a little, you get a little, and treaties are how you do that, and every treaty involves giving up some sovereignty. Domestic and foreign affairs are tremendously intertwined, so they're going to affect domestic policies, and making a binding agreement to not discriminate against women or torture.

Oh, and of course, his economic policies would lead to millions of Americans sneaking into European countries to do menial labor.

Paul predicted the war on terror would be a never ending war that would result in the growth of the state in our lives. He was absolutely correct.

Paul predicted the inflation of the money supply by the Fed would eventually lead to malinvestments (cf the housing bubble) that would lead to a huge market correction and a precipitous drop in the dollar. He was right again.

Instead of dismissing him as "batshit" crazy, perhaps some of the bobble-headed apparatchiks who vote based on brand should spend more time thinking about WHY Ron Paul has these views and less time licking hillary clinton's ass.

Instead of forming your conclusions based on mischaracterizations provided by others, you might want to read what he has written.

Sound economic policy is a RADICAL departure from our current system. The federal government would shrink drastically without significant loss of services. Do you think that the federal government finances your local schools? Think again.

Shrinking military spending by ending 'nation building' would eliminate most all of the need for personal taxation. Shrinking superfluous bureaucracy and incomprehensible porkbarrell spending would free completely.

It is not that free markets have failed us, it is that they have never been tried.

Trade with other nations instead of bombing them, and America will prosper again.

Missing the good old days when you and your buddies could have a good laugh sliming people behind their backs and no one would speak up to defend them?

Well, first of all, there are a LOT of us.

Secondly, we believe in Ron Paul because we recognize the truth and wisdom of his policies...

Which is the reason why we are opinionated on the subject. We KNOW what we are talking about.

I have not found one criticism of Ron Paul's economic or social policies from someone who understands the issues. It is that simple.

You cannot quell the truth. Truth can withstand Ad hominem attacks and emotional arguments.

My challenge to those not familiar with Ron Paul is to study him. I promise that you will not hate yourself when you become a supporter :-)

Also- regarding the UN; the UN is nothing more than a front for US expansionism and a pyramid of central banks that are promoted by the barrel of a gun.

Look at the World Bank's success in "debt relief" if you have any doubt.

UNICEF is a failure as much of the relief rots in warehouses under the control of local warlords.

That is if his anti-choice and theocratic stances haven't done that already.

Returning to the gold standard is a terrible idea, having the EPA and FDA around is a good thing, and trusting the future of the country to corporations and the "free market" is laughable.

I understand while a person like Ron Paul attracts a lot of fans in these times of government corruption, but his proposed policies are frankly loony.

And Paul doesn't even support the FairTax you dummy. He said he supports removing the IRS (one part of the FairTax proposal), but unlike other proponents he doesn't want to replace it with another Orwellian monster. Get your facts straight.

Fair tax is a consumption based tax scheme that is not promoted by Ron Paul.

Elimination of PERSONAL income tax is not in any way related to a 'Fair Tax' consumption tax.

As far as Dr. Ron Paul's views on abortion; Ron Paul does not believe that the Federal government has ANY jurisdiction over abortion issues. As such, he would not seek any pro-life federal legislation.

This is a non-sequitur argument as he does not believe in executive activism and wants the federal government OUT of our lives, not more controlling.

So calm down, if he is elected, you can still kill your babies at will if you like.

As for his PERSONAL views, his mind was made up when he was an intern and watched a perfectly healthy baby cut from its mother and thrown into a trash bin as it was crying. He is OBGYN who has taken the Hippocratic oath, and believes that there are inconsistencies in the law where you can be charged with murder for killing an unborn child under certain circumstances, and legally paid for it under others.

I hope this helps.

That is if his anti-choice and theocratic stances haven't done that already."

Ron Paul does not support the Fair Tax.

Ron Paul is personally pro-life/anti-choice, and that only further highlights why we should support him. Because he will not Federally mandate his own personal preferences. That contrasts with the rest of the candidates who are anti and will ban it, or are pro and will fund it. Neither should happen. Why is it the Fed's business? If I am anti and you are pro, I can avoid an abortion and you can get one. Everyone is happy (except the nosy, and fuck them). Same goes for his religious beliefs, no government interferance or support. I happen to disagree with Paul on both of these points (among others), but he is unique in that he will not get the Fed involved in promoting/banning based on his preferences. Hillary? Giuliani? You had better hope they agree with you 100%, because you will live according to their preferences.

Please support Ron Paul financially or at the straw polls. - Thanks

Don't believe that? Read this well-documented summary.

Secondly, RON PAUL SUPPORTS THE FAIR TAX. Here's the video, you can watch him express his support for it yourself.

Ron Paul supports a commodities based system of exchange, which is different than, but often conflated with gold standard. "Money" is something of actual value, as opposed to fiat currency. Commodity backed currency includes specie as well as most other fixed goods. The Constitution states that money can only be gold or silver, HOWEVER that does not mean on a 1 to 1 value. People used to counterfeit gold coins because the dollar amount was MORE than the value of the metal itself. The constitution does not prohibit bank notes, and they would still exist. You cannot debate this issue on such simplistic terms. You should read the writtings of the founders and the debates regarding currency and central banking. There is LOTS of information on this, but few today have any understanding of the issue.

As far as the FDA - They do not protect you. They are more often used to shield manufacturers of harmful products from liability and scrutiny.

A good example is a lady that I know who had made a 99+% accurate pregnancy test that was nothing more than a special lens that you spit on. If your dried spit forms certain shaped crystals, then you are pregnant. The FDA blocked her from selling it claiming that it was somehow unsafe to users because they would be exposed to their own spit! The FDA guaranteed business to EPT and the like by turning this entrepreneur down for approval. In doing so, they did not help the people. Private groups are much better as watchdogs, such as Consumer Reports.

The EPA 'ALLOWS' companies to dump crap into our air and water and shields them from liability for doing so. This does NOT help you. The EPA is a bullwork against lawsuits form those damaged by unclean industry. By recognizing property rights, you are better protected from dirty industry because you can go after those who pollute YOUR air and YOUR water. The market sorts it out.

Looney is a good description of our current situation. Lets try to do better shall we.

I am confident that when your look deeply into these issues, you will peer beyond the veil of propaganda and see the wisdom of reform.

Yes, I read Eli's piece. Getting rid of the Environmental Protection Agency? Right.

Shove that right wing nut job up your ass.

And when natural disasters hit they have ALL agreed NOT to seek Federal or State assistance. EVER!!!!

You are either not listening to your own source, or you are being dishonest.

Again... Ron Paul does not support the 'Fair Tax' proposal.

Are you familliar with tar tariffs? They are not a new thing. We have had them in-place since our beginning.

Notice that his entire message was stating that by eliminating spending, you can eliminate taxes.

It is not rocket science, so I am sure you can understand that.

No war and porkbarrel spending eliminates the need for PERSONAL taxation.

You seem to be reaching.

I think that your objection to Ron Paul is motivated for other reasons.

Do you believe that America should elect a Democrat, and not a Republican?

You do realize that they are both wings of the same party don't you?

The problem with Iraq is this administration had no intention of building up Iraq once we took over. They WANTED chaos and in that chaos, take the oil. And look for a strong arm dictator to be replacing Maliki in the next few months.

Again... Ron Paul does not support the 'Fair Tax' proposal.

You're the one being dishonest. He states, in the video, as clear as day, that he'd vote for it. Or does Ron Paul routinely vote for things he doesn't support?

Regulation has not failed. Why do you think that greater implementation of a failed policy would produce positive results?

Laissez-faire policies are not as simple as you may think.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_to_Serfdom

The opposite of an ACTUAL free market system is a system that is controlled by segments of the market and special interest groups.

The clear political distinction between the two is either to view law and property rights from an individualist perspective vs. a collectivist perspective.

To distill this down to its essential - are rights and ownership of property vested in the individual, or the appointed leaders of a collective.

It is a HUGE philosophical discussion that cannot be adequitly pursued via blog posts, but if you see it from its implementations, the question is this...

Do you believe that our Constitution and legal tradition of upholding the rights of all men, or do you believe that the few should own all property and reserve all rights?

Do you believe in individual liberty, or authoritarian control?

Do you believe more in the traditions of the United States, or do you admire more the National Socialist Worker's party (Nazi) and the Soviet Union?

This is not a small question.... and I do not mean to overemphasize the stakes.

Whether or not you agree with me is unimportant. What is important is that you understand what the arguments are.

You have been brought up under a mild form of collectivism where even our bill of rights is looked at from a collective viewpoint.

To understand 'the other side', which you will not hear about in state run schools, I cannot give you a better source than this seminal work. PLEASE... PLEASE! read this book written by a Nobel Prize winning economist:

http://www.amazon.com/Road-Serfdom-Fiftieth-Anniversary/dp/0226320618

In passing he mentioned that he 'MAY' support it if it came up for a vote, ant that he does not believe that it will make it to a vote.

If Ron Paul considered the bill for approval, he would not support it because of its language.

The only thing in the bill that he supports is the elimination of personal income tax.

The parties are close enough that debating the differences is futile. We can debate the differences between Coke and Pepsi too, they're opposites, right? No, they're both sugary brown colas and there are choices like water there. Why debate the differences between Republicans and Democrats when they are both looking to spend huge amounts of money to dictate how we live? How they'll dictate isn't worth debating. We need a change. There are options. I'll be supporting Ron Paul.

So tell me. When will the Democrats get us out of Iraq? Last I heard they were pushing for more war funding.

Who bombs more countries? Hell, Clinton bombed FIVE countries when he was in office. We were all seeing discussions of 'mustard' stains when he bombed a pill factory in the Sudan. He bombed Kosovo, backing the Islamists there.

Party politics is a scam. Look who funds the candidates! They are all funded by the same folks... they just play good cop bad cop in a big sucker play that keeps us voting the same bastards into office.

Do you know where the US got all of that money to 'rebuild' Europe? The spoils of war filled our coffers that were already inflated with debt money. We used that war like all of the wars since the Civil War.

Please don't believe me; Take a look at what a highly decorated Marine general had to say on the subject:

General Smedley Butler - USMC 'War is a Racket'
http://www.the7thfire.com/Politics%20and%20History/WarRacket.htm

Between federal, state and local taxation, I pay about 50% of everything that I earn to the government. I have never taken federal or state aid before, but if I need to in the future... BELIVE me that I have already paid for it at least once over.

Now don't you all have anti-zionist militia meetings to run along to?

As in 1 percent of the probable vote.

Not gonna happen.

Oh and one other thing "Taxes are the price we pay for civilized society" Oliver Wendal Holmes (who was a conservative jurist)

Enjoy those hot dogs under a Ron Paul Presidency. But it has already been said, Ron Paul has 0% chance of winning.

GET IT NOW! The government regulation allows rat feces in your food and dioxin in your water! Further, they protect the adulterators and contaminators from liability.

You state worshipers crack me up.

Rule of thumb... if legislation says something specific in its title, you can bet it does the opposite.

Dr Rock... I can see that you have less than zero to add to this discussion based on your ad homenim.

I wish upon a star that anti- Ron Paul people had a real argument to discuss instead of emotional responses, personal attacks and nebulous unqualified statements.

Indeed...... now you get it.

@Gitai, I wish they would. But trust me, when they go to their mailboxes on their 65th B-Day looking for that check and it is not there I am sure they will be the first to freak out.

Oh and one other thing "Taxes are the price we pay for civilized society" Oliver Wendal Holmes (who was a conservative jurist)

OK, the name is spelled Oliver "Wendell" Holmes". But that's just the first bit of stupidity on your part. It's obvious to me that you don't know a goddamned thing about Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. You don't know how to spell his name but like most leftist cretins you love the quote about taxes being the price we pay for civilized society.

OK, here are some other quotes from Ollie for you. "Three generations of imbeciles are enough". Or the full quote from Buck v. Bell 1927.

We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.

Damn, why is it that I never hear the leftist cretins who are so quick trot out the "Taxes are the price we pay for civilized society" quote trot out the "three generations of imbeciles are enough" quote from old Ollie?

Or there's Ollie's "clear and present danger" argument in Schenck v. United States, 1919. You know about Schenck don't you? Charles Schenck was a socialist who was arrested for distributing a pamphlet encouraging men to resist the World War I draft. The circulars proposed nothing more than peaceful resistance to the draft. Ollie, writing for the full court wrote:

"[w]hen a nation is at war many things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to its effort that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight, and that no Court could regard them as protected by any constitutional right."

Man, isn't that the argument that the Republicans are making right now? You know, that there's a war on, so we should just shut up and support the president. Hmmmm, I don't see you quoting that one. As an aside Schenck is also the source of the "shouting fire in a crowded theatre" argument. Where Holmes said

The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic. [...] The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.

Of course while the quote is pithy the analogy is completely fucking stupid as anyone familiar with the facts of the case knows. Schenck was not attempting to falsely incite panic, he was making a peaceful case against the military draft. Only a total fuckhead would confuse the two. But of course members of the pithy quote brigade such as yourself probably aren't aware of any of this. Nope, you just seize on the pithy quotes, which are all that you can fit into your tiny little brains, without knowing anything about the man behind them other than that he was a "conservative jurist" (which might be disputed by some, Holmes was more of a legal realist and actually quite radical in some of his decisions) which you use to attempt to prove your points.

-BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, Pennsylvania Assembly: Reply to the Governor, November 11, 1755.—The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Leonard W. Labaree, vol. 6, p. 242 (1963).
This quotation, slightly altered, is inscribed on a plaque in the stairwell of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty: “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

I'm amused that folks' impression of Ron Paul is that he's "nuts" or "batshit crazy". Since when is upholding the Constitution considered crazy?

The oath of office is thus: I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Seriously, who was the last President who has fulfilled that oath? Certainly none in the last two to three decades.

Ron Paul has been faithfully voting according to one credo for his entire Congressional tenure: "Does this measure follow the Constitution?" He knows it. He lives it. He has integrity, in that he votes consistantly on that guiding principle, even though it makes him unpopular, even among his Republican peers.

In our Coke/Pepsi political parties--where the far right wants to regulate your morality, and the far left wishes to smother you in nanny--legislation "safety", Ron Paul is a breath of fresh air. I wish I'd known about him sooner: He's the first candidate in 20 years--since I started voting, for that matter--that I want to vote FOR, rather than choosing the lesser of two evils.

I believe that he can get this messed-up country back on track: It'll trickle down. FREEDOM can only be reclaimed at a grass-roots level--as it has since the Revolution began--and it will take US.

Yeah right, reducing the role of the Federal government in our lives is going to result in a hobbesian nightmare! You keep believing that.

You guys all belong in an Orwellian novel.

On the other hand many of these comments appear as though they were lifted from Fox news-- fallacy of the excluded middle, ad hominem and red herring anyone?

or did you just show up for the rhetoric?

(thx for the commentary anyway ;)

-D

In Standing Opposition to Lowest Common Democracy

I support Paul because I'm sick of being tied to the bemoth that the US has become. I was one of the few that actually got a Condo in Canada after '04. I love the NW (Cascadia) but can no longer abide by Southern Theocratic rule.

Amongst Pauls many "crazy" ideas is the sovereignty of each state under the original Constitutional understanding. If anyone wishes control of Washington by Washingtonians they should seriously give Paul a look. Yes, it's true there will no longer be Federal handouts for Cascadians but then again there won't be Federal taxes. We would be on our own to collect the taxes currently going to the Federal Government and to craft our own solutions to our own problems. I'd much rather have that than being under the thumb of D.C. or Burmingham.

Ron Paul's a nut, by the way.

Ron Paul knows this and is standing against it and I stand with him.

If you refer to the only candidate that would support a Cascadia as a nut, you are the one that should search for a new handle.