My writing has been light here as of late as I have been pretty busy. I will try to write a little more next week. For today, I would like to continue some of my thoughts on Ron Paul and I will do it using his own words. You can decide if you agree with his extreme words and views.
I have already shown you some of his conspiracy theory-esk comments in previous posts so I will not mention them here. The first comment I will mention is from a 2003 House speech by Ron Paul that I think really illustrates how he feels towards Republicans in general, especially those who support our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan to defend our country against these threats.
“Here is a brief summary of what neocons believe:
- They agree with Trotsky on permanent revolution
- They are for redrawing the map of the Middle East
- They believe in preemptive war to achieve their desired ends
- They accept the notion that the ends justify the means
- They express no opposition to the welfare state
- The endorse an American empire
- They believe lying is necessary for the state to survive
- They believe a powerful federal government is a benefit
- They believe pertinent facts should be held by the elite and withheld from those who do not have the courage to deal with it
- They believe neutrality in foreign affairs is ill advised
- They believe imperialism is appropriate
- Using American might to force American ideals on others is acceptable
- 9/11 resulted from the lack of foreign entanglements, not from too many
- They dislike libertarians and all constitutionalists
- They endorse attacks on civil liberties, such as the Patriot Act”
To give you an idea of who Ron Paul and his supporters consider “Neo-cons”, I get called that all the time. His supporters will try to scare you with this rhetoric, but anyone who reads my website regularly knows that this does not accurately depict conservatives who do not support him. Here are some more.
From a 2008 Republican Debate
“We have a foreign policy where we blow up bridges overseas and then we tax the people to go over and rebuild the bridges overseas and our bridges and infrastructure are falling down. We have a $1 trillion foreign operation to operate our empire.”
More extreme language that mis-represents our missions overseas and tries to scare people and make them emotional. Notice the words he uses, and the fact that he conveniently leaves out the threats these nations posed to us. His numbers were also fact checked and he used a multiple of 2.
From Meet the Press in 2007
Q: Under President Paul, if North Korea invaded South Korea, would we respond?
Ron Paul: Why should we unless the Congress declared war? I mean, why are we there? In South Korea, they’re begging and pleading to unify their country, and we get in their way.
My question: Does he understand anything about the Koreas? Does he really believe that we are hampering the unification of Korea? Does he really believe that the North Korean leadership would welcome this?
From a 2007 GOP debate
“You can’t discuss energy without discussing our foreign policy. Why do we go to the Middle East? You know that oil is very important about the Middle East and why we’re there. Why did our government help overthrow Mossadeq in 1953? It had to do with oil. So our foreign policy is designed to protect our oil interests. The profits–that’s not the problem. It’s the problem that we succumb to the temptation to protect oil interests by literally going out and fighting wars over oil.”
He believes that the Iraq War was fought because of oil. Did he read the authorization of force that he voted against? Has he done any research on the threats in the region? There is of course the concern of the control of oil, but that does not explain the situation in Iraq. As I have said before, I do not believe Ron Paul truly understands the threat we face or the Islamic religion that it is based upon.
From a 2007 Republican Debate
“We could bring our troops home and become diplomatically credible again around the world. Today we’re not. Even our allies resent what we do. We wouldn’t have no more preemptive war. We would threaten nobody, not Iran. It is proven Iraq didn’t have the nuclear weapon, had nothing to do with 9/11. The Iranians have no nuclear weapon, according to our CIA. There’s no need for us to threaten the Iranians. We could immediately turn the Navy around & bring them home. This would be a major step toward peace.”
There are a lot of misleading statements in this quote. Our allies do not all resent what we do. Saddam’s intent (from his interrogation) was to get UN blessing that he had no WMD and then restart the programs that he had temporarily put on hold. There were also multiple terrorists organizations operating in Iraq to include Al Qaeda (Ansar al Islam). They were also harboring one of the 1993 world trade center bombers and were paying families of suicide bombers among other things. This was also during the time frame of the troop surge. Ron Paul voted to remove all troops in 180 days (not physically possible) and leave Iraq in Chaos. Not very sound decision making if you ask my opinion.
On CNN in 2007
“I would say that since 70% of the American people want out of the Iraq war, and they are tired of it, the Republicans better pick somebody who is opposed to the war or have a new foreign policy, or they can’t win.”
Political power over national security? By this logic we were justified in the war against Iraq because over 70% of the people supported it at the time. The political thing to do? Just a thought.
2007 Presidential forum
Q: What policy would you support to guarantee young Black and Latino men a fairer equal justice system?
A: A system designed to protect individual liberty will have no punishments for any group and no privileges. Today, I think inner-city folks and minorities are punished unfairly in the war on drugs. For instance, Blacks make up 14% of those who use drugs, yet 36 percent of those arrested are Blacks and it ends up that 63% of those who finally end up in prison are Blacks. This has to change. We don’t have to have more courts and more prisons. We need to repeal the whole war on drugs. It isn’t working. We have already spent over $400 billion since the early 1970s, and it is wasted money. Prohibition didn’t work. Prohibition on drugs doesn’t work. So we need to come to our senses. And, absolutely, it’s a disease. We don’t treat alcoholics like this. This is a disease, and we should orient ourselves to this. That is one way you could have equal justice under the law.
It is interesting he would answer this question with his stance on legalizing drugs. I would say that is very political on his part. It is also interesting that he ignores the history of drugs in the country. We have legalized some drugs in the past…it did not exactly work out like he thinks it did (if he knows about this). I would say he is for legalizing just medical marijuana except for this 1988 statement. “All drugs should be decriminalized. Drugs should be distributed by any adult to other adults. There should be no controls on production, supply or purchase for adults.” The states could then make their own laws, but they would be doing the same thing he criticized above.
These last two are interview questions from Meet the Press in 2007. I included them because I thought they were pretty funny personally. They are his answers to earmark spending and term limits.
Q: The Wall Street Journal says you load up Bills with special projects for your district.
Ron Paul: How many of them ever got passed? But the whole point is, we have a right [to our money back from taxes].
Q: They pass. You vote against them, but you take the money.
Ron Paul: They take our money from us, and the Congress has the authority to appropriate, not the executive branch. And I’m saying that I represent my people. They have a request, it’s like taking a tax credit. The whole process is corrupt so that I vote against everything. I vote against it, so I don’t endorse the system.
Q: But when it passes overwhelmingly, you take the money back home.
Ron Paul: I don’t take it. That’s the system.
Q: Well, when you stop taking earmarks or putting earmarks in the spending bills, then I think you’ll be consistent.
Ron Paul: I’m trying to change that system. To turn it around and say I’m supporting this system, I find it rather ironic and entertaining.
Q: You ran on term limits. “I think we should have term limits for our elected leaders.” You’ve been in Congress 18 years.
Ron Paul: But I never ran on voluntary term limits. There’s a big difference. I didn’t sign a pledge for a voluntary term limit. Matter of fact, some of the best people that I worked with, who were the most principled, came in on voluntary term limits. Some of them broke their promises, and some didn’t, and they were very good people. So some of the good people left. I didn’t run on that. I support term limits. We had 16 votes on term limits, and I voted yes for them. But voluntary term limits is a lot different than compulsory term limits.
Q: But if you believe in the philosophy of term limits, why wouldn’t you voluntarily [limit your own term]?
Ron Paul: Philosophy is the solution. What the role of government ought to be, so if you have a turnover and the same people come in and they believe in big government, nothing good is going to come of it.
There are plenty of other statements you can find, but I will stop here. I agree with Mr. Paul on many issues but the ones we have disagreements are just too big. There are other conservatives who are more in line with what I believe and in my opinion can have more influence in Washington to get our conservative ideals pushed through in Congress.
I found many of these quotes on this site. Ontheissues.org I found this site to be a very good resource for many different things.
Also early primary voting has started with the official voting date on March 2nd. The Brazoria County GOP has a really informative site to help you out with any of your questions on who is running for what position and the various propositions on the ballot. Remember, there are 3 candidates running against Ron Paul in the primary. I encourage you to check them out.
And if anyone wants to bash me in person, I will be at the Lincoln-Reagan dinner this Friday in Lake Jackson. I think that is enough for now…have a blessed day.
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i’m beginning to wake up to the ron paul game, but in all fairness some of your points are little misleading. one for instance is the terror group Ansar al Islam which operated within Iraqi borders, but not controlled by Saddam. they operated in a very small area on the very edge of Iraq next to Kuwait.
another, you state the threat that Iraq posed for justifying the war on Iraq. Their was no threat from a third world country 6,000 miles away with virtually no navy. the Bush admin created a monster by stating we don’t want a smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud. this was the beginning of the Bush Doctrine(preemptive war). we now go to war in order to get them before they get us. this is a flawed foreign policy that history will judge harshly. we must remember that their are dozens of senoir cia, senior defense experts, and senior diplomats close to the situation that are on record as investigating all the evidence and they state that the decision to go to war in Iraq was made on Sept 12th, 2001. Watch the documentary “Uncovered: the war on Iraq”. This documentary has dozens of close to the events senior officials discredit our reasons for going to war in Iraq. Why you continue to defend the Bush policy on Iraq is confusing. Very few people who have looked at the evidence continue to defend their policy.
back to ron paul, his traditional liberal libertarian view of social policy is extremely flawed. there are no true family/christian values in his social policy. he hits a homerun on fiscal/monetary policy and a double on foreign policy. he strikes out socially. i also believe he and his family sit around amazed at the kooks who continue to send him money as they go about there business spending that money without accountability. it’s time for a change of representation in the 14th district. who do you recommend? i hear there are 4 candidates.
max-
I agree with you on the social issues with regards to Ron Paul and some of the fiscal issues, but not on national defense. I see him as just as weak as Obama on this issue. Based upon his positions and statements I do not think he understands the threats that exist. Ansar al Islam is just one example of the terrorist connections with his regime and they also operated North of Baghdad. (Zarqawi trained this group after he was wounded in Afghanistan in 2002 and then was responsible for the assassination of a US ambassador the same year) I mentioned numerous other connections in my previous posts. The fact that they were not directly controlled by Saddam makes no difference. The Taliban did not directly control the terrorist organizations within their borders either. Like the Taliban, Saddam allowed them to operate freely and harbored them when they needed to escape. He also supported other anti US terrorist organizations outside his borders.
The conflict with Iraq was a very gradual escalation of force for over a decade. The fact that they planned for it after 9/11 makes perfect sense to me militarily. We were just attacked by a terrorist organization. Wouldn’t it then be prudent to look at countries who harbor these terrorists as threats and prepare for that threat? At the higher levels we prepare for conflicts with potential threats all the time. People just do not know about it. It also does not surprise me that there were those in the administration who did not agree with the decision. With something as serious as going to war, I would expect a lot of differing opinions and options. A lot of what we are seeing is in hindsight though…that 20-20 vision we all love. The other reasons in the authorization for force explain further why the decision was made, but I would guess fewer than 1 in 10 Americans have actually ever read it. I find it interesting that those items are never brought up.
Aside from whether going in was the right thing to do, his decisions after the fact trouble me as well. His votes to de-fund the war before plans were in place for re-deployment and his vote to remove troops within 180 days when Iraq’s security forces were not strong enough were irresponsible and politically motivated. I do not know if people realize how dangerous those decisions would have been if they had passed.
But back to something we can agree on. I do believe it is time for new representation in the district, but I have not really decided on who yet. Of the three other candidates, I believe either Gerald Wall or Tim Graney would do a great job. I do not know much about the third candidate to give an opinion. Gerald worked in the plants for his entire career and I believe really understands the everyday life of the average American and how Washington’s decisions affect us. Tim started up a small business from scratch and so understands this aspect of Washington better, which is good considering how they are really trying to over-regulate business now. I think both are what the founders envisioned… everyday people who have had success in private life coming to Washington to serve and then go back home.
tzc,
okay then no further argument, but i encourage you to use your blog as most successful blogs operate. you write your blog allow for comments then leave it alone. no rebuttal is needed on your part. your position is recorded and comments are then received. anyway, it is your blog and you can operate however you wish. the high road and silence usually sends a thunderous message. something that i have learned as god tames my tongue. i acknowledge that you are not contentious at all, just a suggestion.
one more thing, i like your blog headline pic, but mr republican is missing. do you know who that is? i hope you do.
Thanks…My Fiance’s younger sister did that pic for me…there are many people I could have put up there…right now I just have a few Presidents, but I assume you are talking about Sen Robert Taft. Maybe I will change up the pictures from time to time…
Maybe if it becomes a successful blog I will not comment as much, but for now that is how I operate…just my style. It would probably be different if I was doing this full time and had a lot of people commenting on both sides. But for now my actual job keeps me pretty busy and so I don’t always put full positions or arguments out there.
yes, taft
understand about your style
Paul is against a our foreign interventionist policies. Those of us who support him are not bothered by that. We have an empire that doesn’t even bring in any of the spoils.
Steve
I understand your point of view as I understand Ron Paul’s, but I do not agree with it especially in this case (that being the current wars). In this case he shows the inability to make a decision based upon a particular threat because he is clouded by a philosophy. We have to look at each circumstance individually and make a decision. I do not believe he can do this or at least is unwilling to do this. I have more respect for those who at least aknowledge the threats, but determine they do not present enough of a danger to address with force. He does not aknowledge there was a threat at all in Iraq.
But that is not really what this post was about. (I discussed these threats in numerous other posts). It is really about how he groups people based upoon their view on the Iraq War and tries to demonize them. It is also about how he mis-represents the realities of the world we live in, the realities of the situation overseas and our mission as a military for political gain. (or maybe he just does not understand these things) It comes down to how he and many others within his organization treat people within in their own party and really people in general. The statements I listed are only a few of many that I could have posted. I personally do not believe someone who would say some of those things should be a representative in Congress. There are better leaders and better people that can represent district 14.
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