zakkubin
02-14-2008, 03:11 AM
This is what everyone reads when they enter the group:
This is a group for those who are confused by the relative Facebook popularity of a reactionary walking fossil who believes we should cut all public spending on education to zero. I say "confusion" because I fail to understand why college students in particular (most of whom attend publicly financed institutions) could possibly consider this guy. I could understand why an 80 year old crippled billionaire with 3 weeks to live might get excited about Ron Paul's legislative checklist, but I fail to see why anyone below the age of 102 or under the uppermost tax brackets has anything to get excited about.
Maybe I'm missing something, but the last time I checked, college students weren't the ones who stand to benefit from a candidate who believes in:
1. Destroying free public education at all levels K-12 and beyond (i.e. abolish the dept. of education, arguing that all education should be a profit-driven business venture, advocating home-schooling, opposing all public spending initiatives, eroding funding by eliminating taxes on the wealthy).
According to Paul’s free market fundamentalism, education should be treated just like any other commodity, like an iPhone, and purchased only if you have enough money to afford it. On his view, it is neither a social good nor a right that any fair or just society should try to ensure. Your parents don't earn enough to pay out of pocket for your schooling? Ron Paul says 'tough luck.' Ron Paul has argued that “parents have the right to spend their money on the school they deem appropriate for their children”, which actually means that a students access to education ought to be directly proportional to how much money their parents have.
Notice that abolishing the Dept of Education would also mean abolishing Pell Grants and Stafford Loans and all Federal Financial Aid for college students, a major reason why hundreds of thousands of students can afford to attend college.
Ron Paul is a long-time supporter of home-schooling and has long argued that taxation (the source of funding for the institution of public education) is theft. Most advocates of education acknowledge that public schools are under-funded and teachers are viciously under-paid and underappreciated. The regressive system of using property taxes from surrounding areas to fund schools leaves students in poor neighborhoods with scant resources, rotting infrastructure and an unfair restriction on their capacity to learn and become educated. Ron Paul’s position, is ‘tough luck.’
True, No Child Left Behind is a horrible program, but it does not follow that any form of federal aid to public schools around the nation is therefore horrible. Just about all advocates of the public school system oppose NCLB, but next to none of them are on board with Ron Paul’s stone-age, home-school-yourself, anti-public school mantra.
Expect at this point that his defenders will reply in the following way: "C'mon... even though he believes this he wont actually go through with it! Congress wouldn't let him! He would just focus on dismantling education funding at the Federal level! He actually loves public education at the state level even though he abhors public spending and argues that profit-driven markets solve all problems."
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2. Making racist remarks such as "If you have ever been robbed by a black teen-aged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be." Paul was also part of a racist newsletter which made statements like, "only about 5% of blacks have sensible political opinions" and "I think we can safely assume that 95% of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal."
Another one of Ron Paul’s newsletters “The Ron Paul Political Report”, published in June 1992, dedicated to explaining the Los Angeles riots of that year, claimed that "Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began. At another part of the newsletter, we learn that the riots were actually the result of “"'civil rights,' quotas, mandated hiring preferences, set-asides for government contracts, gerrymandered voting districts, black bureaucracies, black mayors, black curricula in schools, black tv shows, black tv anchors, hate crime laws, and public humiliation for anyone who dares question the black agenda."
In early 1990, another Ron Paul newsletter, “The Ron Paul Survival Report” had a special issue on the "The Coming Race War," and, in November 1990, an item advised readers, "If you live in a major city, and can leave, do so. If not, but you can have a rural retreat, for investment and refuge, buy it."
Paul’s Newsletter also had many kind words for former KKK leader David Duke, claiming that "our priority should be to take the anti-government, anti-tax, anti-crime, anti-welfare loafers, anti-race privilege, anti-foreign meddling message of Duke, and enclose it in a more consistent package of freedom."
Ron Paul has argued on many occasions (most recently on “Meet The Press”) that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a MISTAKE which "reduced individual liberties.” Paul has made it absolutely clear that he would have voted against the bill had been in office at that time, a convenient position for a crusty old racist white man to take, having never lived under the oppression of Jim Crow.
On the topic of slavery, Ron Paul believes that it was a crime that the federal government actually 'stole' the private property of slave owners because of emancipation. On his view, slaves should have been * purchased * out of slavery. The fact that he would even entertain for a moment the thought of 'compensating' a class of whites responsible for designating human beings as property, for rape, cultural destruction, vicious oppression and terrorism against blacks, speaks volumes about Paul’s political philosophy.
This is not simply an anomaly to the rest of Paul’s beliefs, but rather, a long standing part of his far-Right, racist politics. Note also that Paul is a longstanding supporter of the Confederacy and has argued on several occasions in favor of secession.
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3. Staunchly opposing universal health care (national health insurance) and in favor of further privatizing a putrid for-profit system that rakes in billions in returns for its ownership while close to 50 million Americans are uninsured (as opposed to ZERO in Canada) and many of those that are insured get dropped or drowned in extremely costly co-pays and premiums. Right now, health bills are the leading cause of bankruptcy in the US and the US Healthcare system ranks 37th worldwide. Ron Paul argues that if we'd just give the private insurance corporations more 'freedom', only then could they show their truly amicable intentions and the whole situation would be puppy-dogs and ice-cream. Like education, Ron Paul believes that access to life-saving health care is just a commodity, to be made available only to those who can afford it. For Ron Paul, democracy is the problem and markets are always the solution, in other words, power belongs in the pocketbook and not at the polling station.
But... Ron Paul is a doctor. So whatever he says is probably the right thing to believe.
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4. Worsening the student debt crisis by further gutting (I say 'further gutting' because Bush and his GOP congress made putative cuts in 2005) programs like Pell Grants and Stafford Loans and giving even more of the student loan system over to a (corrupt, as we've seen from recent revelations in NY) billion-dollar for-profit industry.
The answer to the student debt crisis, according to Paul, is to slice and dice all public spending on higher education and give the whole system over (i.e. privatize it) to huge corporate banks who run the billion-dollar student loan racket. Remember, education isn't a public good or a right, it should be thought of like any other mundane commodity (e.g. frosted wheats) and bought and traded as such. Your parents can’t afford college out of pocket? Ron Paul blames you (not an unjust system in which access to education is restricted by social status) for not taking ‘personal responsibility’.
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5. Destroying the environment: in the 109th Congress alone, he voted to allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, to shield oil companies from MTBE contamination lawsuits, against increasing gas mileage standards, to allow new offshore drilling, and to stop making oil companies pay royalties to the government for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. For Ron Paul, any law which restricts the behavior of business owners to maximize profits is a bad law. When it comes down to the uninhibited pursuit of profits ad infinitum versus creating a sustainable society built around the ideas of human and environmental health, Ron Paul will always choose the former. He has openly admitted on many occasions that a “solid respect for property rights will make for a healthy environment.” I, for my part, fail to see how giving Exxon-Mobil and Monsanto more leeway to do whatever they please and taking away all regulations and restrictions on what they can and cannot do the environment makes for a healthy anything.
We should find this as no surprise, however, since Ron Paul holds the insane quasi-religious conviction that markets and profit-motives will always produce perfect outcomes, come hell or high water.
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6. Supporting right-wing anti-choice laws and stripping women of reproductive rights. Ron Paul preaches a good deal about 'letting the states decide' on abortion, however, he has attempted to ban abortion at the federal level (Sanctity of Life Act). Furthermore, the 'states rights' position on this issue is nothing other than a means of avoiding giving arguments and subsequently creating a smokescreen for weakening legal and safe access to abortion. If you're actually against abortion, come out and say so. "States rights" doesn't begin to give an answer to the difficult political questions that abortion creates, it only gives a quick-and-dirty means of shutting off discussion and sneaking in ways of dismantling legal, safe access to abortion.
But don't bother thinking for yourself on this issue... just repeat 'states rights' incessantly and remind us that Ron Paul is a doctor (and therefore, couldn't but be correct on the issue).
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7. Supporting and espousing homophobic and anti-gay politics. Ron Paul wrote a bill called the "Family Protection Act" that starts with abolishing the Department of Education and ends with "Prohibits the expenditure of Federal funds to 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."
In 1990, a "Ron Paul Political Report" newsletter mentioned a reporter from a gay magazine "who certainly had an axe to grind, and that's not easy with a limp wrist." In an item titled, "The Pink House?" the author of a newsletter--again, presumably Paul--complained about President George H.W. Bush's decision to sign a hate crimes bill and invite "the heads of homosexual lobbying groups to the White House for the ceremony," adding, "I miss the closet." "Homosexuals," it said, "not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities." When Marvin Liebman, a founder of the conservative Young Americans for Freedom and a longtime political activist, announced that he was gay in the pages of National Review, a Paul newsletter implored, "Bring Back the Closet!" Surprisingly, one item expressed ambivalence about the contentious issue of gays in the military, but ultimately concluded, "Homosexuals, if admitted, should be put in a special category and not allowed in close physical contact with heterosexuals."
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8. Opposing Church-State Separation: From keeping "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance to co-sponsoring the school prayer amendment to keeping the Ten Commandments on a courthouse lawn, this "strict constitutionalist" isn't a big fan of the Constitutionally-mandated separation of church and state. He will tow the 'states rights' line here as well, but make no mistake about his support for allowing religious conservatives to demolish state/church separation (Read the bill he sponsored, the frightening "We The People Act"). Paul also believes the Constitution is "replete with references to God" even though it makes none whatsoever... so much for his billing as a 'Constitutionalist'.
We should also take note that Ron Paul has made clear on several occasions that he DOES NOT BELIEVE IN EVOLUTION. I’m not so sure how I would feel having a doctor operate on me that believed I was ‘intelligently designed.’
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9. Supports the repeal of public programming like NPR, PBS and the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities. These are examples of the terrors of "big government", according to Paul.
Yet, for all the vitriol he may (or may not) spew at news outlets like Fox News, big corporate cable media of this sort is precisely what unfettered markets both produce and nourish. Fox News isn't about good journalism, it is the paradigm of commodified, profit-obsessed, tabloid-quality entertainment-trash which is what happens when media becomes an industry set up to make the most money possible.
What if producing necessary, critical, in-depth, thoughtful and engaging journalism isn't the most lucrative option in a market rife with entertainment-kitsch 'news'? Is critical journalism therefore less necessary for any conception of democracy worthy of the name?
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10. Supporting xenophobic anti-immigrant positions. This is where Ron Paul's nativist and Right-wing tendencies are most pronounced. This is also another issue (the others being his racist and anti-gay views) where Ron Paul draws the staunch support of Far-Right groups such as Neo-Nazis.
According to Ron Paul, immigrants, even those who have lived here for decades, aren't human beings... according they are 'aliens' who must be expelled from our society. According to this logic, we should not try to make legal immigration less absurd and exclusive, we should not try to include the ranks of undocumented workers into our society, but we should punish the U.S.-born children of undocumented workers by denying them access to education. This isn't about 'following the law'... this is about thwarting any legal or political changes that might allow Mexican workers to come to the U.S., a nation in which the only 'native' inhabitants largely live on reservations. Nationalism, like Ron Paul, is a disease.
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11. Opposing every single gain that the Labor Movement has made this century. Ron Paul is against worker's rights, workplace democracy and virulently opposed to workers organizing themselves against exploitative employers (Ron Paul has consistently voted against stopping employer interference in union organizing and he opposes the Employee Free Choice Act.) Note also that from Ron Paul's libertarian perspective, workers are nothing other than exchangeable commodities, not human beings who depend on the wages they earn from their labor to live on. According to free-market orthodoxy, labor laws establishing 40 hr work weeks and workdays, overtime, OSHA, unionization, etc are all "rigidities" which disrupt a firm's ability to maximize profits for ownership most effectively. If it weren't for regulation of business we wouldn't have labor laws prohibiting unsafe work environments and child labor... of course these things were both popular during Ron Paul's favored period of American history: The Gilded Age.
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12. Favoring the abolishment of the minimum wage altogether (a standard libertarian belief.) Let me repeat this one more time: RON PAUL THINKS WE SHOULD ABOLISH THE MINIMUM WAGE ALTOGETHER. Remember, according to this logic we need to let businesses push wages as low as they want because to do otherwise is for democracy to lay its dirty hands on the immaculate 'free market'. The minimum wage, according to libertarians, forbids greedy employers from pushing wages low enough that they can take on more laborers without sharing any of the proportion of profits funneled straight to the top... thus their argument is that the minimum wage 'causes' unemployment (its unclear what good full employment is if the jobs being created pay poverty wages). However, the fact of the matter is that NO hard-working human being EVER deserves to work 40 hours a week for a pay check that cannot meet their most basic needs. Ron Paul opposes the minimum wage because it doesn't allow profit-hungry businesses to make wages LOW ENOUGH. Talk about having the wrong priorities. This should come as no surprise since just about all of Ron Paul's politics rest on a fundamental preference for the good of business over the good of society.
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13. Destroying the graduated income tax (reverting to the regressive system in place during the Gilded Age), letting the rich get out of paying their fair share and depleting funding for social goods. On Ron Paul’s view, it’s ‘communistic and against liberty’ for Warren Buffet to be expected to pay more in taxes than someone working two jobs earning less than $20,000/year. It’s the prerogative of freedom, however, that businesses be encouraged to drop real wages as low as possible. The more the scheme of taxation shifts the burden from the rich onto the working and middle classes, the better according to Ron Paul. The values of civic duty, social responsibility or solidarity are trash according to Paul, who consistently aims to encourage and insulate the greediest, most anti-social and avaricious among us.
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14. Repealing the most effective and popular social program in our nation’s history, Social Security. He also favors trashing Medicaid, Medicare, and every other social program put in place since the New Deal... he also probably thinks that Public Libraries are 'communistic institutions' and that if you cannot afford a book, you should just take personal responsibility and go out and buy it yourself (or write one yourself and then read it yourself.) Oh, the collectivist horror of making books available to everyone free of charge! How dare they bring men with guns to 'steal' my tax dollars in order to fund public services! Outrage!
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15. Being content with genocide in Sudan and enabling the perpetuation of atrocities. Ron Paul voted against a bill that would have required the Federal Government to divest from corporations doing business with mass murders in Sudan. Instead of making a statement against nihilistic profit-obsessed corporations, RP preferred a masturbatory "No" vote demonstrating his isolationist and anarcho-capitalist 'street cred'.
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16. Spearheading pork-projects totaling in the billions for his district by means of earmarks. Ron Paul does not deny this, however, claims that the money ‘has to be spent somewhere’ and thus might as well be spent on his district. I guess spending that money on things like healthcare and education are atrocious violations of our freedom and tantamount to authoritarianism, but its no big thing if Ron Paul siphons billions of tax dollars to fund projects for his district in Texas.
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Yes, Ron Paul is against the Iraq War, and so are Pat Buchanan and David Duke (a major supporter of Ron Paul, incidentally). The fact that he is against the Iraq war alone isn’t enough to actually make the guy worth a second look. He's also not the only person running for president who is advocating withdrawal (Kucinich (D) and Gravel (D), both of whom also have no chance of receiving a nomination, both advocate immediate withdrawal.) His non-interventionist (i.e. Paleo-Conservative isolationist) position on Iraq cannot be a compelling reason to suspend judgment about the lunacy of his other positions.
"But he's consistent throughout his whole career!" They will say. Yes, we agree, but since when is being consistently wrong about everything that matters a good thing?
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Ron Paul has failed to break into the top 3 in either Iowa, or the heavily-libertarian state of New Hampshire (where his dupes claimed he would win for sure.) He has no chance of winning the nomination and we should expect his numbers to steadily decline from their current peak during the post-NH primary run. Oh, but it has been very impressive how many morons decided to throw away their money by donating it to this loon. Kudos to Ron Paul and his squad.
As a Congressman, Ron Paul (R-TX) has voted with his party nearly 80% of the time, which places him firmly within the bounds of a "rank-and-file-Republican".
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