FOR LIBERTY - Ron Paul 2012

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I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm actually starting to like Ron Paul a bit more politically. There are a few issues I disagree with him on, but like what the High Priest of the Church of the Painful Truth said: The more you hear Paul, the better he sounds.... Until you get to his foreign policy.
His foreign policy is what I love the most actually! I like how he goes to the source of our problems and not focus on the symptoms like others do.
 
Isolationism? Surely that would weak America's influence?
 
An earmark is allocating money that has already been approved for spending; if someone in Paul's district didn't get it, someone else would. If I were in Congress, though, I think I would try to get an earmark for the money to be sent out as tax refund checks rather than directing it to shrimp farming or restoring an old movie theater.

Isolationism? Surely that would weak America's influence?
Influence to do what, and for whom? Are you better off as a result of the U.S. bombing Libya?
 
I was under the impression that America valued it's ability to influence other countries.
 
The problem is that we're in the mess now, so we better do something about it. Hiding in a corner and pretending the problems we started don't exist isn't going to fix the problem.
Nobody advocates that. Sounds like a strawman to me. I've done some research on Ron Paul's foreign policy views and I've learned that CIA veteran and terrorist hunter Michael Scheuer would likely be Paul's Secretary of State. I don't know about you, but I would feel MUCH safer with Michael Scheuer at the helm, instead of Hillary Clinton.


Link to video.
 
Bad idea increasing ties between the CIA and state department. There should be some degree of separation and tension between them so they stay on their toes and fact check each other, while avoiding a snowball effect because nobody bothered to check the data.
 
I would never vote for Ron Paul, and consider him a kook, but you have to admire him for his consistency. He is a true libertarian in the strictness of his belief against state intervention in nearly all matters, public and private. That position is impossible to uphold in real world governance, but at least from the philosophical point of view, it's consistent.

Allow me to translate; peace, freedom, and balanced budgets are "kookish". Everybody knows the economy is wonderful and its all sunshine and teddy bears ahead. Anybody who advocates fiscal responsibility and foreign sanity abroad is by definition a "kook".

Link to video.
 
Yesss, the evil Wall Street! Our feudal lordsss. Hiss! Instead of trying to set them up as a bogeyman and vilifying them, use economic reality: what power does "Wall Street" (by whom do you even mean?) have over the market? They are not the be all and end all of capital, and these Wall Street firms would still provide a market service so long as they remained competitive.

I see. You're a melodramatic child.

If you refuse to admit that the captains of industry, the hedge fund managers, and the global-corporation CEOs control a disproportionate amount of capital and, therefore, power, then you are truly deluded.

I think the laissez-faire market comparison to feudalism is accurate because it is not in the interests of the ruling classes to promote social mobility - their insane drive to sap the funding of inner-city schools wholesale is testament to that (plus, uneducated workers are less likely to question whether or not they're getting a raw deal). In fact, if they can decrease social mobility as a cultural and economic phenomenon, that would be ideal. And you can forget about new titans of industry sprouting up out of the gutter and creating new, brilliant inventions without any education. As a matter of speculation, it is as accurate to say this as it is accurate to say that the alternative system with the rational, measured-decision leaders is antithetical to the principles of freedom.

Power nuclei will generate whether or not there's a regulatory body to - ahem - *facilitate* this gravitation. That's a simple fact of history. Try as you might, you can't stop powerful people from banding together to raid the less powerful for their own selfish gain.

The rule of law, righteousness, and the existence of government serve to counterbalance those anarchistic influences. That this, as their function, has been forgotten is telling of how incredibly uneducated the libertarians are.

It's also hilarious because a lot of these mutterings go to defending the financial moguls and the money-movers: hedge-fund managers and the like. These people are exactly not the sort of great men that Ayn Rand praised. They don't create anything, nor do they contribute anything, and their value to society is not intrinsic as the libertarians claim.

A nation that is run entirely by financiers will be run over roughshod by the pages of history, I can guarantee you that right now.
 
Nobody advocates that. Sounds like a strawman to me. I've done some research on Ron Paul's foreign policy views and I've learned that CIA veteran and terrorist hunter Michael Scheuer would likely be Paul's Secretary of State. I don't know about you, but I would feel MUCH safer with Michael Scheuer at the helm, instead of Hillary Clinton.
Actually, Ron Paul says we should leave Iraq and Afghanistan, even in the mess that they are in now. I am against that. I believe we should clean up that mess, as well as still be active in the Middle East in terms of keeping an eye on Iran.
 
Actually, Ron Paul says we should leave Iraq and Afghanistan, even in the mess that they are in now. I am against that. I believe we should clean up that mess, as well as still be active in the Middle East in terms of keeping an eye on Iran.
Why does the government have to do that? Private American citizens that think those things should be done can do it themselves.
 
Actually, Ron Paul says we should leave Iraq and Afghanistan, even in the mess that they are in now. I am against that. I believe we should clean up that mess, as well as still be active in the Middle East in terms of keeping an eye on Iran.

I used to think that way about Afghanistan, but I'm more and more convinced that further commitment would be a typical case of the sunk cost fallacy and that we should cut our losses sooner rather than later.
 
Actually, Ron Paul says we should leave Iraq and Afghanistan, even in the mess that they are in now. I am against that. I believe we should clean up that mess, as well as still be active in the Middle East in terms of keeping an eye on Iran.
Look at what they do to us here, and you think they can fix things in a country where they aren't at all accountable to the people impacted by their decisions?
 
Who exactly are 'they' and what exactly are they doing ?
 
I used to think that way about Afghanistan, but I'm more and more convinced that further commitment would be a typical case of the sunk cost fallacy and that we should cut our losses sooner rather than later.
What I'm thinking is that first, we should send more troops in. (I know, I know, without naming names, I know posters are going to whine about that. But it has to be done to efficiently rid the area of terrorists, which is our primary problem.) Using those troops, we clean out the terrorists more effectively. That was basically the whole problem in the first place. We should have stuck to Afghanistan and left Iraq alone, thereby pouring all our resources into clearing out Afghanistan, rather than the skimping that we did. I know, sending in more troops isn't going to fix the problem right then and there, but it's the basic framework.

The American military and military contractors. "Re"-building Afghanistan and Iraq.
Our military isn't really doing anything to us here.....
 
What I'm thinking is that first, we should send more troops in.
If by "we", you mean private persons and entities hiring available private mercenaries, I agree. We have already poured way too many taxpayer dollars into this if you are claiming the mission remains unaccomplished.

Plus, your stated objectives seem unclear. Are you for rebuilding or killing terrorists or some combination of both? If we do temporarily achieve the mission, what is to prevent the reappearance of a terrorist base once we leave?
 
Actually, Ron Paul says we should leave Iraq and Afghanistan, even in the mess that they are in now. I am against that. I believe we should clean up that mess, as well as still be active in the Middle East in terms of keeping an eye on Iran.
You might want to rethink that endeavor. Here's some sobering news from Michael Scheuer on "cleaning up our mess".


Link to video.
 
Would you mind giving a tl;dl version of that? I'm not going to sit around for 40 minutes.
 
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