This is an entry I wrote in response to a smear article, so I'm sorry it starts off in the second person. They said Ron Paul opposes international intervention in humanitarian crises and they said he would probably would have voted against the Civil Rights Act. I think he *did* vote to abolish the civil rights act. But only because he's smarter than the rest of the legislature. Here's why:
Humanitarian Crises
Dr. Paul does not oppose international intervention in humanitarian crises. He opposes unilateral, state-sponsored, hostile interventions by the federal government without formal declarations of war. I think Dr. Paul would point to the fact that Amnesty International, as a private entity, does more for the world than America does when it steps into world affairs with combative measures. For all the orphans of these crises, there are also orphans of service-members who died in Iraq, Viet Nam, and various other misadventures to liberate the world. Like Dr. Paul and me, you are a veteran, so you know that our blood is just as red as anyone else’s and you know the families of service members suffer as much pain from their loss as anyone else.
The real problem with sending troops to aid foreign countries is not that it is morally wrong. The problem is that it is so difficult to draw a clear line between when it is right and when it is wrong. When in doubt, we should prefer to err on the side of troops staying home to watch their children grow and we should set a high standard for when it’s acceptable to intervene. Fortunately, the Constitution already sets that standard pretty high. It requires that Congress declare war before we commit the brave men and women of the Armed Forces into combat. This has the effect of forcing the Congress to bear the responsibility of its actions and deliberate over the consequences instead of deferring those responsibilities to the executive. It is not a perfect method and it will not always yield the right results, but it is much better than allowing the legislature to altogether abrogate its Constitutionally-mandated responsibility. Any true conservative will recognize that.
For these reasons, Dr. Paul would have Congress take a hard look at the crises in places like Darfur. He would have them first determine whether there are diplomatic methods by which the Congress can achieve similar change. Perhaps Congress can put the offending governments into default on loans. Perhaps it can contract with other nations to cease trade into the region. War should always be a last recourse. And when it comes time to commit our troops into battle, it should be done with a formal declaration, a plan to win, and an exit strategy. These aren’t the policies of an isolationist. These are the policies of a reasonable person.
It is folly to think that Dr. Paul would altogether ignore the plight of suffering people. When that last resort becomes necessary, he would be prepared to take up the challenge. But forcing troops into conflict on whims and half-baked theories of preemptive necessity is as old as Caesar’s campaigns in Gaul. As a civilization, we should have grown since then. Something tells me that he would be more likely to intervene into genocides that prove to disrupt the order of world peace and trade as a last resort, than un-provable theoretical harms in weak and debilitated countries as a first resort. Yet, we have the done the exact reverse, haven’t we? We’re fighting a five-year-and-growing undeclared war in Iraq while we ignore the more immediate threats to humanity. That is the true folly.
Civil Rights
He would probably have opposed the Civil rights Act in practice because it is an example of the Federal Government going beyond the prescriptions of the Constitution, but he would not be opposed to the principles behind it. I suspect that he would point to the facts that Dr. Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Bus Boycott brought Montgomery, Alabama to its knees before the federal government lifted a finger. He would laud King’s civil rights movement as parcel to a greater non-violent, civil-disobedience tradition that includes the movements of Mahatmu Gandhi and Jesus Christ.
When the federal government gets involved, it makes promises it simply cannot keep. There is no doubt that it has good intentions, but it necessarily stymies these movements when it promises to advance their cause by subjecting it to the gridlock of the federal legislature. It claims that if we only write our legislators and use the electoral process we can fix social ills on the senate floor. This is dishonest. We know that adverse political interests and special interests pollute the process at the federal level. Worse yet, when you consider that the battles on the Senate floor fill their coffers more than the victories themselves, we can see that our advocates in the federal government have no real incentive to win: but rather to prolong the battle indefinitely and blame defeat on the opposing party. As an economic matter, this method should produce marginal results: only succeeding when it's absolutely necessary to maintain credibility. As an empirical matter, that's exactly what it does. If legislators truly fought for the causes that they pay lip-service to, we would see more filibustering, more bipartisan appeals, and less vacations. This is what Dr. Paul means when he says liberty, not the government, cures ills. Liberty creates non-violent, civil-disobedient movements. The federal government simply gets in their way.
The Civil Rights Act was therefore a Band-Aid on an egregious wound. It gave the false assurance that the federal government will help to solve our woes, but we’re suffering from that assurance today. We do not take to civil disobedience anymore regardless of the fact that the Patriot Act infringes on our privacy and there are a mounting number of police using semi-deadly weapons on unarmed, non-threatening citizens. Our founders would be horrified to see police using tasers when people don’t supply a driver’s license quickly enough. Yet we offer little resistance because we have been deluded into thinking that our only solution is to change federal legislation. In short, we have forgotten how to get anything done. So how do we achieve the same goals as the Civil Rights Act without using the federal legislature? That leads into the next point: Strict Constitutionalism and Devolved Federalism.
Strict Constitutionalism and Devolved Federalism
One of the principles that justify the ideology of Strict Constitutionalism is that the Constitution can, and should be, amended when the citizens demand it. Without adherence to Strict Constitutionalism activists tend to focus their efforts to achieve things like racial and social equality through the divided federal legislature. This is the wrong method because it results in gridlock and a waxing and a waning of the efficacy of those policies. By contrast, when the people focus their efforts on constitutional amendments, it gives the Congress an unequivocal mandate which they cannot snub. It gives them their marching orders.
In our democracy, the Constitution is only the “law of the land” in name. The true law of the land is the Will of the People as evidenced in the first three words of the Constitution. The People’s Will ratified the Constitution to create and enumerate the powers of the federal government and the People’s Will can amend it. Yet if we allow that government to interpret liberally the very charter that brings it into existence, we suffer from an abrogation of our own power and a necessary disconnect from our control over the government. This is a very dangerous proposition. Nowhere else in the law are contracts so liberally construed. We do not allow corporations to broadly interpret their articles of incorporation because it would be detrimental to shareholders. You can look at the scandals of the Enron Corporation to understand that. Yet we, as the shareholders of this country, are allowing the federal government to create an Enron-like structure out of our Social Security Trust, infringe on our rights, commit us to needless wars, undermine our monetary system, and compromise our national security.
In contrast, when the federal legislature is restrained by a strict-constitutional philosophy, people focus their efforts on creating permanent reform by constitutional amendment rather than subject their Will to the temporary whims of pseudo-representatives in Washington and the special interests that fund their campaigns. This results in more productivity and less political wrangling. It may also result in less political division and more political parties. But as it stands now, we achieve no productivity because politicians fail to appropriately direct us through the proper channels. I have no doubt that major issues like global warming could be addressed more quickly and efficiently if they didn't have to vie against special interests at the federal level.
In contrast, when the efforts are directed toward the local level, they get more purchase. When a group of people trade ideas in a coffee shop, they influence their local governments much more than they influence their federal government. Part of this is because of the aforementioned problems with the federal government, but part of it is because of the unique structure of local governments. Local legislators tend to have term limits and tend to live in close proximity to their electorate. More importantly, the ratio of local citizens to local legislators is much more conducive to change and much more subject to the public will. This makes it harder for special interests to get a foothold.
Fortunately, the framers anticipated the disparity of interests between the people and the federal government and structured the Constitution so that it could be amended by the same method that it was ratified: through the states. Dr. Ron Paul appropriately sees this as our only solution, as did the long line of Republicans before him. He follows in the traditions of the founders and adheres to the Constitution as strictly as we could hope any federal legislator would. His solution provides a paradigm-shift where the people reclaim their power in the way the framers of Constitution and the old Republicans intended. His unwavering dedication to that document in spite of the political shifts in Washington D.C. is all the more reason to believe that he will fight against a bloated and corrupt federal government in the manner that “We the People” already prescribed. In this sense, he is the one true populist candidate because he refuses to deviate from the script that the population gave him.
Senator McCain recently said that the Republicans went to Washington to change Washington, but Washington changed the Republicans. But Paul’s adherence to the Constitution lends itself to certain imperviousness to groupthink as evidenced by his consistency over thirty years. If only every Republican was as Republican as Dr. Ronald Paul.
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Saturday, December 1, 2007
The CNN/Youtube debacle
CNN made Fox News look legitimate last week when it co-sponsored the CNN/Youtube Republican debate. It promoted the show with an appeal to populism and it still maintains that we, “the voters” asked the questions. Of course the voters didn’t participate in the editorial process where CNN narrowed 5,000 Youtube entries to a final 20. Given that those 20 were remarkably freakish and largely without substance, CNN should explain its decisions.
I can't speak to their motivations but it looked like CNN used youtubers to behave obnoxiously in ways that respectable moderators cannot. I also note that something about the videos allude to misconceptions about conservatism. CNN is not totally at fault though. As neoconservatives have become more shrill and confused, misconceptions about the party overall have been justified. But CNN made no effort to understand Republicans and that just made the experience useless for everyone.
Two videos stood out to best demonstrate these failures. One featured a crazed 20-something kid who bounced the Bible directly in front of the camera and demanded to know if the candidates believe “every word” of it. No doubt the CNN handlers thought this was a legitimate question. The press suffers from the illusion that religious conservatives never grapple with secularism, else why would they be religious? But any christian who has attended college knew the forthcoming response. “I believe some stories are literally true and some allegories for larger truths.” was the overwhelming refrain from secular-Catholic Giuliani to ordained minister Huckabee.
The second video included a gun enthusiast named Jay Fox who blasted at targets with a 12-gauge shotgun before asking a question about gun control. With the zeal of a Branch Davidian, he cocked his gun and threateningly asked for pledges of 2nd Amendment support.
In one of Duncan Hunter’s few opportunities to speak handled the archetypal militia-man marvelously: “Well, first I've got to inform Jay that, at someone who got his hunting license at age 10, you should never throw a gun to a person. He should have taken that gun handed-off from his fellow hunter. So you have to be safe with guns, Jay.” Thus, Hunter asserted his historical alignment with the 2nd amendment, criticized careless gun ownership, showed that he doesn't buckle at the sound of a pump action, and reminded America that guns are for hunting, not Hollywood-like showmanship -all in one fell swoop.
There was also a thread of mock woven throughout the debate. Not just a few of the questioners had badly-faked southern accents. Many sounded overly demanding in their questions. Even before the debate, senior political analyst Bill Schneider promoted it on the CNN webpage by channeling the Ringling Brothers’ ‘step-right-up’ theme. That webpage is removed now.
CNN’s biggest failure was not their inability to overcome bad presumptions about Republicans, though. Neither was it their inability to professionally portray a debate among the next possible leaders of the free world. Instead, it was their negligence in tackling topics Republicans want to hear about and not allowing other Republicans to have ample airtime. Even if the polls are accurate such that Romney and Giuliani are shoe-ins for the battle at the Republican convention, CNN must know that it plays a role in securing that finish. More importantly, if so many Republicans have committed to those two candidates, what is the point in giving them all the air time? Are there any undecided Republicans that haven't heard of Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani? This all forced the other candidates to winnow their platforms down to whether or not they agreed with the front runners.
Recap:
Tom Tancredo got a moment to mention that he has been ignored in all of the previous debates and was promptly ignored again.
Ron Paul's questions were mostly substance-less, forcing him to try to pack what was arguably the most elaborate political platform into 2 or 3 minutes, while also answering questions about (1) whether he believes in conspiracies and (2) what he'll do when he loses. Paul responded that the first question cited ideologies, not conspiracies (it wasn't about 9/11 truth). To the second question, he said that he will stop running. Anderson Cooper reminded him to stick to the question when he deviated into something that mattered.
Duncan Hunter gave the aforementioned clever answer to the gun video. While it may have scored some minor points among the base, it scored major points in demonstrating the silliness of the whole debacle. Given his adeptness with that question, perhaps we could have used more Duncan Hunter. Yet other than that, he didn't exist.
Mike Huckabee now supports the abolition of the IRS. He doesn't seem to know what the Fair Tax is, but he nods with the people who do. No doubt, If Paul had not gotten thunderous applause for that position in previous debates, Huckabee would find something else to support. In-spite-of/because-of the fact that he is weakest on economic planning, he got some of the best economic questions. He remained weak.
In fact, all of the candidates pledged to fix Social Security, reduce the debt, stop deficit spending, stop borrowing money from China, and fix inflation. All but Paul want to continue the war indefintely. No one bothered to ask them how to achieve this financially impossible reconciliation.
McCain probably 'won', but only because he had both ample time and an opportunity to talk about issues. He attacked Paul for supporting a troop withdrawal by citing his own authority to speak for the troops, since he broke bread with some four-star generals over Thanksgiving. As a former enlistedman, I can imagine what the corporal who served McCain thanksgiving napkins on his only day off says about that. Paul returned that more troops send his campaign money than McCain's, but it was lost in delivery.
Mitt Romney again clarified his changed position on abortion. I thought his answer was satisfactory, but one wonders how many of the other candidates would have achieved satisfactory clearing-ups if they were allowed to have free reign to speak impulsively like Romney.
It seemed like CNN wanted the Republicans to come across like George Bush, but they underestimated intelligent, experienced politicians’ ability to look baffled by stupidity. All they achieved was a confused panel candidates responding to an annoying group of pretenders. If CNN wanted delineate the issues, they should have asked John McLaughlin or Pat Buchanan to choose the questions. If they wanted to prove Republicans have no substance, they should have asked substantive questions to see who floundered.
Instead, we came away knowing more about Giuliani’s affiliation with the Red Sox than we did about Tom Tancredo’s fiscal policies. Republicans are getting sick of Giuliani and Romney, yet CNN prompts them to vote for one of the two by sheer exhaustion.
I can't speak to their motivations but it looked like CNN used youtubers to behave obnoxiously in ways that respectable moderators cannot. I also note that something about the videos allude to misconceptions about conservatism. CNN is not totally at fault though. As neoconservatives have become more shrill and confused, misconceptions about the party overall have been justified. But CNN made no effort to understand Republicans and that just made the experience useless for everyone.
Two videos stood out to best demonstrate these failures. One featured a crazed 20-something kid who bounced the Bible directly in front of the camera and demanded to know if the candidates believe “every word” of it. No doubt the CNN handlers thought this was a legitimate question. The press suffers from the illusion that religious conservatives never grapple with secularism, else why would they be religious? But any christian who has attended college knew the forthcoming response. “I believe some stories are literally true and some allegories for larger truths.” was the overwhelming refrain from secular-Catholic Giuliani to ordained minister Huckabee.
The second video included a gun enthusiast named Jay Fox who blasted at targets with a 12-gauge shotgun before asking a question about gun control. With the zeal of a Branch Davidian, he cocked his gun and threateningly asked for pledges of 2nd Amendment support.
In one of Duncan Hunter’s few opportunities to speak handled the archetypal militia-man marvelously: “Well, first I've got to inform Jay that, at someone who got his hunting license at age 10, you should never throw a gun to a person. He should have taken that gun handed-off from his fellow hunter. So you have to be safe with guns, Jay.” Thus, Hunter asserted his historical alignment with the 2nd amendment, criticized careless gun ownership, showed that he doesn't buckle at the sound of a pump action, and reminded America that guns are for hunting, not Hollywood-like showmanship -all in one fell swoop.
There was also a thread of mock woven throughout the debate. Not just a few of the questioners had badly-faked southern accents. Many sounded overly demanding in their questions. Even before the debate, senior political analyst Bill Schneider promoted it on the CNN webpage by channeling the Ringling Brothers’ ‘step-right-up’ theme. That webpage is removed now.
CNN’s biggest failure was not their inability to overcome bad presumptions about Republicans, though. Neither was it their inability to professionally portray a debate among the next possible leaders of the free world. Instead, it was their negligence in tackling topics Republicans want to hear about and not allowing other Republicans to have ample airtime. Even if the polls are accurate such that Romney and Giuliani are shoe-ins for the battle at the Republican convention, CNN must know that it plays a role in securing that finish. More importantly, if so many Republicans have committed to those two candidates, what is the point in giving them all the air time? Are there any undecided Republicans that haven't heard of Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani? This all forced the other candidates to winnow their platforms down to whether or not they agreed with the front runners.
Recap:
Tom Tancredo got a moment to mention that he has been ignored in all of the previous debates and was promptly ignored again.
Ron Paul's questions were mostly substance-less, forcing him to try to pack what was arguably the most elaborate political platform into 2 or 3 minutes, while also answering questions about (1) whether he believes in conspiracies and (2) what he'll do when he loses. Paul responded that the first question cited ideologies, not conspiracies (it wasn't about 9/11 truth). To the second question, he said that he will stop running. Anderson Cooper reminded him to stick to the question when he deviated into something that mattered.
Duncan Hunter gave the aforementioned clever answer to the gun video. While it may have scored some minor points among the base, it scored major points in demonstrating the silliness of the whole debacle. Given his adeptness with that question, perhaps we could have used more Duncan Hunter. Yet other than that, he didn't exist.
Mike Huckabee now supports the abolition of the IRS. He doesn't seem to know what the Fair Tax is, but he nods with the people who do. No doubt, If Paul had not gotten thunderous applause for that position in previous debates, Huckabee would find something else to support. In-spite-of/because-of the fact that he is weakest on economic planning, he got some of the best economic questions. He remained weak.
In fact, all of the candidates pledged to fix Social Security, reduce the debt, stop deficit spending, stop borrowing money from China, and fix inflation. All but Paul want to continue the war indefintely. No one bothered to ask them how to achieve this financially impossible reconciliation.
McCain probably 'won', but only because he had both ample time and an opportunity to talk about issues. He attacked Paul for supporting a troop withdrawal by citing his own authority to speak for the troops, since he broke bread with some four-star generals over Thanksgiving. As a former enlistedman, I can imagine what the corporal who served McCain thanksgiving napkins on his only day off says about that. Paul returned that more troops send his campaign money than McCain's, but it was lost in delivery.
Mitt Romney again clarified his changed position on abortion. I thought his answer was satisfactory, but one wonders how many of the other candidates would have achieved satisfactory clearing-ups if they were allowed to have free reign to speak impulsively like Romney.
It seemed like CNN wanted the Republicans to come across like George Bush, but they underestimated intelligent, experienced politicians’ ability to look baffled by stupidity. All they achieved was a confused panel candidates responding to an annoying group of pretenders. If CNN wanted delineate the issues, they should have asked John McLaughlin or Pat Buchanan to choose the questions. If they wanted to prove Republicans have no substance, they should have asked substantive questions to see who floundered.
Instead, we came away knowing more about Giuliani’s affiliation with the Red Sox than we did about Tom Tancredo’s fiscal policies. Republicans are getting sick of Giuliani and Romney, yet CNN prompts them to vote for one of the two by sheer exhaustion.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Ouch! Ron Paul campaign is biting back.
Since I'm fairly new to the blogosphere, I've been wondering how opinion columnists are able to get away with intentional misconstruals of Ron Paul's platform. They won't get away with it anymore.
The first victim of of her own hubris is Mona Charen at National Review Online. Seizing the (apparent) open season on Paul, she wrote this column. But she broke the camel's back when she got a response from Jesse Benton, the Ron Paul 2008 Communications Director.
It appears that Charen didn't have a single irrebuttable point. And several were just dead wrong. I highly recommend reading this post. Keep up the good work Benton!
Griz
The first victim of of her own hubris is Mona Charen at National Review Online. Seizing the (apparent) open season on Paul, she wrote this column. But she broke the camel's back when she got a response from Jesse Benton, the Ron Paul 2008 Communications Director.
It appears that Charen didn't have a single irrebuttable point. And several were just dead wrong. I highly recommend reading this post. Keep up the good work Benton!
Griz
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Why the Internet Community Promotes Ron Paul
This is a response I wrote to a Seattle Post-Intelligencer article, "Will the Web Pull the Rug From Under Ron Paul's Feet". The article gave a cursory review about the Ron Paul buzz on the Internet and asked why the Internet population seems to take such an interest in Paul.
Here is my response:
If Ron Paul has a handicap, it's that his ideas are complex and difficult for quick consumption. He doesn't resort to the easy-out demagogy that seems to be political par these days. Instead, he engages the more robust discussions that Americans entertain in coffee shops and academic quarters. As Glen Greenwald at Salon.com describes, "While Barack Obama toys with the rhetoric of challenging conventional wisdom, Paul's campaign -- for better or worse -- actually does so, and does so in an extremely serious, thoughtful and coherent way."
This sort of thinking is ill-suited for the soundbite-oriented mainstream press. It can only be understood in its entirety by doing enough research on the Internet. Thus, the Internet is where Ron Paul flourishes.
Second, he regularly challenges the conventional wisdom of Washington D.C. Objectively, his points are equally as valid: trade instead of war, low taxes instead of corporate welfare, lower grocery prices instead of agriculture subsidies. But again, the common American assumption that politicians succumb to the whims of Washington can only be overcome by researching the theories that underlie his beliefs. Why, for instance, was he the only Congressman who opposed casting a posthumous gold medal for Rosa Parks? It turns out, he wasn't opposed to casting the medal per se, "Rosa Parks is a hero of mine...I believe in civil disobedience". Instead, he offered to help pay for it with his own money and encouraged other Congressmen to do the same. They would not.
Paul makes an excellent point here: Why is congress willing to raid your Social Security and tax you for a medal that they're not willing to pay for themselves? If you use the Internet, you can delineate that point. But if you get all your information from the press you'll hear, "Ron Paul hates Rosa Parks".
This article also evidences this phenomenon. It says that Paul blamed the attacks on 9/11 on American foreign policy. That was a demagogic oversimplification of his statement. It was first misconstrued by the moderator, then by Giuliani, and now Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reiley. Bill Maher had to correct Chris Dodd about this point, "Excuse me Senator, but that is just what the Republicans at the debate were trying to do, they were trying to say that he blamed America for 9/11". He wasn't talking about some good-and-evil blame-game that informs most of our Bush-era understanding of the world. He was talking about geopolitical cause-and-effect. The fact that he is correct according to the 9/11 Commission report, the CIA's declassified intelligence, and Paul Wolfowitz himself seems to matter little to voters who don't have the time to do the appropriate research.
The fact is, Paul appropriately addresses the issues that America faces. There is no doubt that Social Security is crumbling. Rogue economists who set out to buy the Democrats some time cannot overwhelm the weight of economic wisdom that a system of IOUs backed by IOUs that the government writes to itself, cannot sustain. The value of the dollar is deteriorating and inflation will be our next biggest long-term financial crisis. Greenspan himself said this in an recent interview. The cost of our war is increasing with no visible end. Not to mention the cost of maintaining troops deployed all over the world. All of these put together are recipe for financial collapse.
Paul's wisdom hails from the school of foresight. While conventional politicians go to great efforts to push problems down to their successors, Paul stands for the idea that we can address them now, on our terms. One thing is certain though; we *will* address them. Hillary Clinton may be in a wheelchair when we do. But an entire generation of Americans who will be worried about putting farm-subsidized bread on the table and will suffer the real, difficult consequences of baby-boomer largess...well, they also use the Internet.
Here is my response:
If Ron Paul has a handicap, it's that his ideas are complex and difficult for quick consumption. He doesn't resort to the easy-out demagogy that seems to be political par these days. Instead, he engages the more robust discussions that Americans entertain in coffee shops and academic quarters. As Glen Greenwald at Salon.com describes, "While Barack Obama toys with the rhetoric of challenging conventional wisdom, Paul's campaign -- for better or worse -- actually does so, and does so in an extremely serious, thoughtful and coherent way."
This sort of thinking is ill-suited for the soundbite-oriented mainstream press. It can only be understood in its entirety by doing enough research on the Internet. Thus, the Internet is where Ron Paul flourishes.
Second, he regularly challenges the conventional wisdom of Washington D.C. Objectively, his points are equally as valid: trade instead of war, low taxes instead of corporate welfare, lower grocery prices instead of agriculture subsidies. But again, the common American assumption that politicians succumb to the whims of Washington can only be overcome by researching the theories that underlie his beliefs. Why, for instance, was he the only Congressman who opposed casting a posthumous gold medal for Rosa Parks? It turns out, he wasn't opposed to casting the medal per se, "Rosa Parks is a hero of mine...I believe in civil disobedience". Instead, he offered to help pay for it with his own money and encouraged other Congressmen to do the same. They would not.
Paul makes an excellent point here: Why is congress willing to raid your Social Security and tax you for a medal that they're not willing to pay for themselves? If you use the Internet, you can delineate that point. But if you get all your information from the press you'll hear, "Ron Paul hates Rosa Parks".
This article also evidences this phenomenon. It says that Paul blamed the attacks on 9/11 on American foreign policy. That was a demagogic oversimplification of his statement. It was first misconstrued by the moderator, then by Giuliani, and now Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reiley. Bill Maher had to correct Chris Dodd about this point, "Excuse me Senator, but that is just what the Republicans at the debate were trying to do, they were trying to say that he blamed America for 9/11". He wasn't talking about some good-and-evil blame-game that informs most of our Bush-era understanding of the world. He was talking about geopolitical cause-and-effect. The fact that he is correct according to the 9/11 Commission report, the CIA's declassified intelligence, and Paul Wolfowitz himself seems to matter little to voters who don't have the time to do the appropriate research.
The fact is, Paul appropriately addresses the issues that America faces. There is no doubt that Social Security is crumbling. Rogue economists who set out to buy the Democrats some time cannot overwhelm the weight of economic wisdom that a system of IOUs backed by IOUs that the government writes to itself, cannot sustain. The value of the dollar is deteriorating and inflation will be our next biggest long-term financial crisis. Greenspan himself said this in an recent interview. The cost of our war is increasing with no visible end. Not to mention the cost of maintaining troops deployed all over the world. All of these put together are recipe for financial collapse.
Paul's wisdom hails from the school of foresight. While conventional politicians go to great efforts to push problems down to their successors, Paul stands for the idea that we can address them now, on our terms. One thing is certain though; we *will* address them. Hillary Clinton may be in a wheelchair when we do. But an entire generation of Americans who will be worried about putting farm-subsidized bread on the table and will suffer the real, difficult consequences of baby-boomer largess...well, they also use the Internet.
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