We all know President Obama is a disaster. So was George W. Bush. So was Clinton. So was Bush Sr. So was Reagan. So was Carter. So was....you get the point. I don't need to go into why President Obama is a disaster...I don't have the time right now. In a nutshell, his foreign policy is naive, immoral, and just plain sucks. His fiscal policy sucks. He disrespects the 4th amendment, the 5th amendment, the 10th amendment, and the 1st amendment. But I digress. This article is a response to a friend of a friend's article smearing Ron Paul.
You see, no one is perfect. Every President has been far from perfect. JFK was a womanizer. Abe Lincoln got rid of the writ of habeas corpus, etc. That also goes for Presidential candidates. None of them are perfect. However, by far, Ron Paul is the closest we will ever get to perfect for a presidential candidate. I know quite a bit about Ron Paul, as I have been following him since May of 2007, back when Rudy Guliani demonstrated his ignorance of why Al-Qaeda attacked the United States on 9/11. Ron Paul is the only one offering anything remotely resembling actual solutions to our country's problems. Will they work? Not necessarily, but history is always on his side, and as a history teacher, I can tell you that many ignoramus Americans today really don't know history. Oh sure, they know their revisionist, nit-picky, secondary source version of history, but do they actually recall facts. You know, things that actually happened? No.
Instead of listing the 100 reasons of why I support Ron Paul for President in 2012, I find it much easier to offer a rebuttal/reaction to this article I came across. In red is the original article. In black are my rebuttals/reactions.
1. He wants to repeal the Civil Rights Act. That's the 1964 law that made segregation illegal and outlawed discrimination on the basis of race, colour, religion, sex or national origin. Paul claims it infringes on people's freedom. If a restaurant or hotel wants to ban African-Americans, he believes they should be allowed to. As he put it in a speech to Congress: "the forced integration dictated by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 increased racial tensions while diminishing individual liberty." Obviously, this is misleading. Paul personally does not believe a restaurant or hotel should ban African Americans. He would be the first to condemn it, and urge customers to never support such a horrible place. If the author actually listened to or read the entire speech, they would quickly see he was trying to make two simple points. 1) Part of the Civil Rights Act damaged our society by increasing racial tensions and limiting freedoms. 2) Parts of the Civil Rights Act was unconstitutional.
2. He's also against the Americans With Disabilities Act. That's the 1990 bill passed by the first President Bush, which followed up the Civil Rights Act by making it illegal to discriminate against someone because of a disability. Paul wants it gone, too. He is not saying it is ok to discriminate against disabled people. He is saying the issue would regulate itself in civil courts. For example, you could sue a private company or it would lose its customer support if it didn't treat people equally. He argues that if any laws should be made controlling business, it should be at the state level, not the federal level.
3. He is against public health care. You know how you think Americans are crazy because they can't do any better on universal health care than the watered down bill Obama got through? Well, President Ron Paul would do much, much worse. He thinksthat in an entirely private system, poor people would have all of their needs taken care of by charitable doctors who would be willing to work for free. Ron Paul, by the way, is a medical doctor. And he's right. History shows us that. Please don't be ignorant of history. Do you think Medicare and Medicaid have always existed? Do you think medical costs have always been so high? They sure never used to be until Medicare and Medicaid began, and until demand skyrocketed after the rise of the percentage of Americans who had health insurance. People were never turned down or kicked out of hospitals if they couldn't pay before Medicare and Medicaid existed. That all said, I actually lean towards a single payer health care system with privatized options. So I guess I'm not completely a "libertarian." Don't get me wrong, government can't do much right...however, just let them handle the money...let the private sector handle everything else.
4. He wants to dissolve the public education system. He promises to eliminate the Department of Education entirely and leave the question of whether to offer any public education at all up to local governments. He calls public education "socialist" (which we actually agree with, but he, unlike us, doesn't think that's a good thing) and says, "I preach home schooling and private schooling." According to an interview, "The Department of Education has given us No Child Left Behind, massive unfunded mandates, indoctrination, and in some cases, forced medication of our children with psychotropic drugs. We should get rid of all of that..." Well that's simply not true. He believes in the Constitution...have you not read our founding document, the law of the land? The 10th amendment clearly states "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." The Constitution says nothing about education. The states should handle it. He wants to get the federal government out of the public education system, but he still thinks the states can have their own public education systems. I'm a teacher, and I can tell you that not one teacher or parent I've ever talked to has said No Child Left Behind was a good law.
5. He thinks global warming is a hoax. In his words, it's "the greatest hoax, I think, that's been around in many, many years — if not hundreds of years". But that's just the tip of the crazyberg. Ron Paul winning the presidency would be a disaster for the environment. He wants to completely disband the Environmental Protection Agency, abolish environmental regulation, and lift, it seems, just about all the restrictions on drilling for oil. Including in National Parks. So what? As a libertarian, he would not change a darn thing. He couldn't if he was President. Don't you understand that Congress makes the laws? The President only enforces them and signs or vetos them. He cares deeply about the environment, but he believes contract law is the solution in order to prevent crony capitalism and prevent big business from having so much influence on our government.
6. He doesn't believe in evolution. When asked about it in 2007, he was pretty clear: "I think it’s a theory. The theory of evolution. And I don’t accept it as a theory." So what? Is the theory of evolution in danger if he's elected President? Get real.
7. He's against federal safety standards. So that means no federal testing to make sure the products you're sold won't kill you. Or that, say, the airplane you're on won't fall out of the sky. In fact, he's in favour of completely disbanding the Federal Aviation Authority, which does stuff like hire air traffic controllers to make sure planes don't collide in the air. He has argued against the Food and Drug Administration, which makes sure pharmaceuticals are safe to take. ("People weren't dying from bad drugs before we had the FDA," he has said, "I mean, it just didn't happen.") And forget Ralph Nader's successful crusade to enforce the wearing of seat belts. Ron Paul is ideologically opposed to the federal government making sure cars even have seat belts. "I mean, do we need the federal government to tell us whether we buy a safe car?" You do know Ralph Nader is Ron Paul fan, right? Ok, he has never said that he wants to get rid of the FDA...he was just trying to make points like the fact that you can get arrested for drinking raw milk. He has also never said he wants to get rid of the FTA.
8. He is radically pro-life. And vehemently opposed to a woman's right to choose. Hesigned the "personhood pledge" making the rounds on the current campaign, suggestingthat abortion should be legally considered to be the same thing as murder. He believes unborn babies have rights just like the baby's mother does. If a woman who is 1 week pregnant is murdered, its ruled as a double homicide. Dr. Paul realizes this is an extremely dividing issue and does compromise on this one- he believes abortion should be handled at the state level, like most felonies. If a state wants to allow abortions, then fine, but let popular sovereignty decide in each state. He does put many libertarians at odds with his views on abortion, but seriously, this issue shouldn't even be mentioned this election cycle- we've got a lot other things we should worry about first.
9. He wants to do away with all foreign aid. Paul's isolationism sounds good to liberals when he's talking about his refusal to invade other nations. But the United States government, under President Paul, would send no funds to the developing world to help combat AIDS or famines or natural disasters or anything else. This is where the author shows true ignorance of facts. He is not an isolationist. He is a non-interventionist. He promotes trade and diplomacy with all countries. Foreign aid hardly ever benefits countries. We've been giving foreign aid to developing countries for almost a hundred years, and guess what? The majority of them are still developing. As he says, "You take money from poor people in this country and you end up giving it to rich people in poorer countries.” He feels free trade and capitalism will help lift developing countries out of poverty, but he doesn't believe the United States government should force other countries to do whatever they say. He actually respects the sovereignty of other countries, unlike the current Administration (or past several Administrations).
10. He would pull out of the United Nations. He openly claims the United Nations is part of a plot to create one world government. "If we continue down the UN path, America as we know it will cease to exist." And not only does he want to withdraw the U.S. from membership, he wants to evict the United Nations from their headquarters in New York. Do you honestly believe this would happen? Congress would never approve. This would be low on the priority list for a Paul Administration.
11. He's against the minimum wage. Instead of making sure that people are paid at least a minimum amount for their work, he believes companies should be allowed to pay whatever ever they like, with the law of supply and demand determining just how little. Lower wages, he argues, would actually help poor people by creating more jobs. And if we didn't have the minimum wage, unemployment would drop to below 5 percent. This is based on years of research and history. Most people who study economics understand this. Now, would the minimum wage disappear if Paul was elected? Of course not. Again, Congress would never approve.
12. He is a gun nut. Our eyebrows are already raised by anyone who claims that having firearms is a "God-given right", like Ron Paul does. But he doesn't stop there. He wants to repeal the legislation that requires a background check when you buy a new gun — you know, to make sure you're not, say, a fugitive from justice, a violent offender, or currently stalking someone. Back when there actually was a ban an assault weapons, he was, of course, against the ban. And now that there isn't, he wants to make sure Obama doesn't get the chance to bring a new one in. Here is the fact: In 2003, Congressman Paul introduced legislation to remove the 5 day waiting period to own guns and to remove the "instant" background check at gun shows. He notes that this instant check allows the government to create a database of gun owners. So again, you are misleading. He still firmly believes in background checks. But seriously, show me the research that proves gun violence goes down when you have gun bans. I'd love to see it.
13. He believes we're waging a war against Christmas. In his words, he claims that "the elitist, secular Left" are waging an "ongoing war against religion" to "transform America into a completely secular nation, a nation that is legally and culturally biased against Christianity." And as if that wasn't crazy enough, he adds, "Christmas itself may soon be a casualty of that war." Yeah, that is a bit crazy. I agree with you. But you know what? Who freaking cares? As President, would Ron Paul declare war on secularism? He firmly believes in the first amendment, and that the government should never favor one religion. I think you were reading a bit too much into that article.
14. He wants to get rid of income tax. He is against taxation in general, of course, which most liberals would disagree pretty strongly with. Especially when it comes to the income tax. It's generally recognized as the most direct way to make sure that poor folk don't have to give up more of their earnings than rich folk do. But Paul wants to get rid of it entirely. If we cut military spending like he wants to, then this could easily be a reality. I'm sorry, did you enjoy paying income taxes? We would still have other taxes to pay for government expenses...tariffs, excise taxes, property taxes, user fees, highway fees, etc...
15. He voted to build a fence along the border with Mexico. In fact, he's pretty radical when it comes to the whole question of undocumented immigration. He has backed off on the fence issue (because, he says, it might be used to keep Americans in) but he has also argued that Emergency Room doctors shouldn't have to treat immigrants without documentation. And that he wants to end birthright citizenship, which says you're an American citizen if you were born in America, whether or not your parents were citizens themselves. Yeah, the whole fence idea was pretty stupid. I actually disagree with him on immigration. I believe there should be an easier path to temporary citizenship through an expanded green card program. Hey, at least he didn't vote for building fences between other countries.
16. He's against the Occupational Health and Safety Act. That's the law that gives Americans the right to a safe workplace, and makes sure an employer doesn't force employees to work in a dangerous or unhealthy environment. That, Paul figures, is unconstitutional. It limits the employer's freedom to put workers in harm's way. Technically it is unconstitutional. Again, do you honestly believe this would happen? Congress would never approve. This would be low on the priority list for a Paul Administration.
17. He wants to U.S. to seize control of the Panama Canal. Paul's isolationism doesn't seem to apply to the Panama Canal. The United States signed a treaty back in the 1970s gradually ceding control of the canal to the government of Panama. But Paul wants tooverturn that. Because if the U.S doesn't seize control of it, he claims some hostile regime might seize control of it instead. This was actually news to me. You educated me, thank you! He does contradict himself a bit here. However, the United States did build the canal. Panama, which barely existed as an independent at the time it was built, would never have been able to build it on its own. "Seize" is not accurate. You can't seize something you already have. Oh, and he's not an isolationist. The only country that is truly isolationist today is North Korea. Even Iran has been unsuccessful in escaping the grasp of globalism.
18. He thinks interstate highways are unconstitutional. You're probably getting the impression by now that Ron Paul thinks that pretty much everything the federal government does is unconstitutional. That's because Ron Paul thinks that pretty much everything the federal government does is unconstitutional. He has even argued againstinterstate highways, saying Eisenhower knew he was bending the law when he built them. Paul figures they're a violation of states' rights. Oh, you got me. If we elect Ron Paul for President, he will immediately shut down interstate highways.
19. He seems pretty homophobic to us. Paul actually gets a lot of credit for being the one Republican candidate who isn't homophobic, mostly because he says that the federal government has no business telling people what to do in their private lives and he's come out against a constitutional ban against same-sex marriage. But it's really not that clear where he stands. His reason for being against the ban is that he believes marriage laws should be left up to individual states or to the church. When some states began to pass laws legalizing same-sex marriage, he fought to make sure other states wouldn't have to recognize those marriages as legal. He's also for don't-ask-don't-tell and hasvoted to de-fund any organization which "presents male or female homosexuality as an acceptable alternative life style or which suggest that it can be an acceptable life style". As for his own personal attitude toward the gay community? Well, an ex-staffer whodefended Paul against charges of homophobia did so by claiming he only knew of two times Paul did something homophobic: the time he swatted away a gay man's hand rather than have to shake it, and the time he refused to go to the washroom at the same time as a gay guy. Actually, he voted to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell. And let's say Ron Paul is a little uncomfortable around homosexuals. I say that won't effect anything if Paul is elected President. He has said time and time again that his personal beliefs don't always transfer to his political positions. Libertarians, by definition, are opposed to the government regulating or passing laws restricting behavior or marriage, which is a religious institution.
20. And he seems pretty racist too. Paul has been haunted by accusations of racism pretty much the whole campaign long. And with good reason. He used to publish newsletters, under his own name, which said unbelievably racist things. Things like, "I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal." And, "If you have ever been robbed by a black teenaged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be." For years, he refused opportunities to distance himself from those comments and those newsletters. Now, finally, he has, saying that they were written by other people, without his knowledge, and that he doesn't share those views. But that's not the only thing that makes us worried. More recently, he complained about the Transportation Security Administration hiring visible minorities to do airport screenings. Again, in his own words: "We quadrupled the TSA, you know, and hired more people who look more suspicious to me than most Americans who are getting checked... Most of them are, well, you know, they just don’t look very American to me." Here is where your article really falls short. It's quite the fallacy that he is racist, but it seems to be out there enough where people who don't like him can always fall back on such fallacy. It's ironic to me, considering he is probably the least racist Presidential candidate we've ever had. After all, it's socialism that likes to lump people into groups and categorize them based on their skin color, religion, ethnicity, or gender. MLK Jr's Dream is not yet achieved. He wanted a color-blind society where people were judged by the content of the character. MKL Jr and Ghandi are the two people Ron Paul mentions the most when he talks about heroes, and he's been saying that for decades. If he is so racist, why can't the author, or anyone else, for that matter, produce any shred of evidence of something racist coming out of his mouth? After all, he has thousands of videos and articles out there...surely something would slip out. If that quote you mentioned is the best you can do, that's pathetic. By the way, here's the full quote: "We quadrupled the TSA, you know, and hired more people who look more suspicious to me than most Americans who are getting checked ... Most of them are, well, you know, they just don't look very American to me. If I'd have been looking, they look suspicious ... I mean, a lot of them can't even speak English, hardly. Not that I'm accusing them of anything, but it's sort of ironic."
20. And he seems pretty racist too. Paul has been haunted by accusations of racism pretty much the whole campaign long. And with good reason. He used to publish newsletters, under his own name, which said unbelievably racist things. Things like, "I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal." And, "If you have ever been robbed by a black teenaged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be." For years, he refused opportunities to distance himself from those comments and those newsletters. Now, finally, he has, saying that they were written by other people, without his knowledge, and that he doesn't share those views. But that's not the only thing that makes us worried. More recently, he complained about the Transportation Security Administration hiring visible minorities to do airport screenings. Again, in his own words: "We quadrupled the TSA, you know, and hired more people who look more suspicious to me than most Americans who are getting checked... Most of them are, well, you know, they just don’t look very American to me." Here is where your article really falls short. It's quite the fallacy that he is racist, but it seems to be out there enough where people who don't like him can always fall back on such fallacy. It's ironic to me, considering he is probably the least racist Presidential candidate we've ever had. After all, it's socialism that likes to lump people into groups and categorize them based on their skin color, religion, ethnicity, or gender. MLK Jr's Dream is not yet achieved. He wanted a color-blind society where people were judged by the content of the character. MKL Jr and Ghandi are the two people Ron Paul mentions the most when he talks about heroes, and he's been saying that for decades. If he is so racist, why can't the author, or anyone else, for that matter, produce any shred of evidence of something racist coming out of his mouth? After all, he has thousands of videos and articles out there...surely something would slip out. If that quote you mentioned is the best you can do, that's pathetic. By the way, here's the full quote: "We quadrupled the TSA, you know, and hired more people who look more suspicious to me than most Americans who are getting checked ... Most of them are, well, you know, they just don't look very American to me. If I'd have been looking, they look suspicious ... I mean, a lot of them can't even speak English, hardly. Not that I'm accusing them of anything, but it's sort of ironic."
In conclusion, it's true- I don't support all of Ron Paul's positions. I don't support all of anyone's positions but my own. But I support at least 90 percent of his positions, and on the big ones- Foreign Policy, The Economy, The Federal Reserve, Civil Liberties....he is spot on. If you can ignore these small blemishes the author mentioned, you still have a great alternative to Obamneygrichorem.
