RSDavis
02-25-2008, 01:13 PM
http://laceylibertarian.us/wp-images/rPaulRev.jpg
Ron Paul Roundup (02-25-08)
by RS Davis (http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=194780914&blogID=361303947&Mytoken=FD09E5EE-4817-44DC-AB34B0593D42B8F572688)
Hello Freedomphiles! Got an interesting Roundup together for you today. Let's start with The Dallas Morning News, who is reporting (http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/politics/state/stories/DN-ronpaul_24tex.ART.State.Edition1.4681760.html) about Ron Paul's fight with Chris Peden over his house seat:
It's tough to think of a political endeavor more audacious than trying to unseat a 10-term member of Congress – except, perhaps, to attempt a jump from the U.S. House to the Oval Office as an anti-war Republican.
Voters in the 14th District get to choose between two such dreamers – Rep. Ron Paul, the odd man out at one GOP presidential debate after another, with his call for a return to the gold standard, an end to the drug war and a radically shrunken federal government; and a challenger who has forced him to divert time and money into protecting his seat by painting him as ineffective, overly idealistic and out of touch with local issues.
The challenger, Chris Peden, portrays himself as everything the incumbent isn't: a loyal, mainstream conservative Republican. Dr. Paul is determined to keep his seat, pleading for support in part to ensure that critics can't paint a loss as a rejection of his ideas.
"You can send a message with your presidential vote, I don't care," Mr. Peden told a couple of dozen voters the other night at a clubhouse on Tiki Island, a fishing village across the causeway from Galveston. "But this district demands representation. It demands aggressive, conservative, hard-working representation."
A half-hour up the road, Dr. Paul had spent part of his afternoon working a business crowd at a Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership meeting on the campus of NASA's Johnson Space Center.
"He's got my vote. He votes his principles," said Bill Quinn, the budget and accounting officer at Texas Chiropractic College. He chalked up Dr. Paul's primary challenge to a shady effort to knock him off stride in the presidential fight.
Jeff Mapes also commented (http://blog.oregonlive.com/mapesonpolitics/2008/02/paul_and_kucinich_face_battles.html):
Paul appears the most endangered. He trailed his challenger by 11 point points in a recent poll.
Now, as I have already mentioned, there is no poll out there saying that Ron Paul is in any danger. In fact, most polls have him leading with 60% of the vote. In fairness, the first article, from what I saw, didn't mention the bogus poll, and Jeff Mapes retracted once someone brought it to his attention.
Now, all the big news seems to be coming out of Austin, where a Ron Paul rally had a whopping 4000 people show up. Businesswire reports (http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20080223005024&newsLang=en):
Today, Republican presidential candidate and Texas Congressman Ron Paul addressed a large crowd of students and supporters on the main mall of the University of Texas in Austin. University of Texas campus police estimate that a crowd of 4,000 people attended the event.
"Dr. Paul's conservative message of low taxes, limited government and strictly following the Constitution resonates with voters here in his home state of Texas," said Ron Paul campaign chairman Kent Snyder.
Blues guitarist and singer Jimmie Vaughan played for the crowd before Dr. Paul spoke. In Vaughan's endorsement of Dr. Paul, the guitarist and singer said, "He knows the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and he always votes for the Constitution."
Jimmie Vaughan, eh? What a legend, man. Big bro to Stevie Ray Vaughan, lead singer of completely underrated band The Fabulous Thunderbirds, I say of that endorsement: Wrap it up. I'll take it.
Mitzie Stelte wrote (http://herald-zeitung.com/story.lasso?ewcd=0222db07304e37e1&-session=HeraldZeitung:40DA3C4E05724387F6OyN3C6F1B8 ) a more artistic description:
As a prop plane with a banner bearing the likeness of Texas native son Ron Paul circled Saturday afternoon, his supporters flocked to the University of Texas' main mall where they danced while Jimmy Vaughan sang "Down with Big Brother."
Excitement built as more and more people showed up to hear the Republican underdog speak on one of his presidential campaign stops throughout the state before the March 4 primary.
President of UT Students for Ron Paul, Chris Robertson, incited the crowd even more as he introduced the longtime U.S. Representative.
Robertson downplayed the success of Republican front-runner John McCain, who holds a nearly insurmountable lead over Mike Huckabee while Paul is a distant third.
"We're Texas," Robertson exclaimed. "Who cares what those other states are thinking!"
And Heidi Zhou wrote (http://www.news8austin.com/content/headlines/?ArID=201189&SecID=2) about it for Austin's News8:
It was at an Austin rally that Ron Paul's dream for the 2008 presidency first took shape one year ago.
"That is when it sort of dawned on me that this could be something different," Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul said.
About 4,000 people cheered on the Texas congressman at Saturday's rally at the University of Texas.
"I want to honor Ron Paul. I think he's the most courageous man in this country and the world," Laine Jastram said.
The Houston Chronicle talked (http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5564994.html) to Paul before the rally about an independent bid:
Acknowledging his imminent failure, maverick Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul said Saturday that he won't get back into the race for the White House as an independent candidate once a GOP nominee is solidified.
"I have no plans to do that," Paul told a small group of reporters before a rally. "I would suspect that if we don't win, if the trends continue we're not likely to win, that I will run for Congress."
Lew Rockwell quotes (http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/019591.html) Rick Fisk:
"My family went to see Dr. Paul speak yesterday at UT's main mall. What a crowd and what a speech! When we approached from Guadalupe, it seemed the entire city had become Ron Paul's own. There was a plane dragging a banner overhead and all manner of people with their Ron Paul signs and stickers arriving. That bell you see Dr. Paul ring just before the Texas straw poll was there as well. Both of my daughters wanted to ring it. When I took them down to ring the bell, who should be just arriving but Dr. Paul himself! It was the closest I ever got. I wanted to get a picture of Dr. Paul and my 9-year-old daughter ( who canvasses the neighborhoods with me ) after his speech but there was just no way. He was definitely a Rock Star. There was a huge crush to get a handshake or signature.
"Three local TV stations were there to cover the event which made me mad actually. All of this blackout and now they show up. It was a great speech. 4000 is probably just shy of the number. Jimmy Vaughn played his brother's 'Texas Flood' to close his show and then told us all about how he supports Ron Paul and no one else. It was a great day."
Here's the rally:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bFbFk2D1V8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyfi0lDwm8c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEv1sWjM58A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TMpI4Zeeps
On a more policy-oriented front, right-libertarian John Armstrong writes (http://www.nolanchart.com/article2891.html) on The Nolan Chart about the idea of blowback:
How in tarnation could someone listen to Ron Paul talk about terrorism and think that he was blaming America for what happened when the world stopped turning that September day nearly 7 years ago?
I wanted to share the quote and my thoughts about it with you.
When addressing how what seemed like corporate price gouging and profiteering could actually be a good thing while good intentioned government intervention could ultimately hurt the people the program was originally designed to help, the author used the example of gas shortages in the 1970's. This shortage was caused by government price controls. I'll spare you the simple economics behind this, but the fact that price controls cause shortages is inarguable. However, there is a lag time between the implementation of these controls and the fuel shortages they caused. Because of this non immediacy, when the shortage inevitably came, many more articles were written blaming the evil corporations for the shortages than the government price controls. Which brings us to the analogy.
The author stated that if one were to strike a match, but it took a day for the head to burst into flame, many people would not be able to see the correlation between the striking and the fire.
So why do people not understand what Ron Paul is talking about when he talks about blowback? We are incredibly short sighted as a nation in terms of cause and effect. The match called blowback sometimes takes decades to burst into flames.
It sounds like Dr. Paul is blaming America even when the former head of the CIA's Bin Laden unit all but says that Rep. Paul is the only candidate left who understands the root cause of terrorism during an interview on Hannity and Colmes.
People are funny.
Yes, they are. Especially people who say things like, "How in tarnation?" But I keed, I keed. It was actually an interesting piece.
The guy he's talking about is Michael Scheuer, by the way.
In other policy-oriented writing, John Armstrong wrote (http://www.nolanchart.com/article2894.html) about Ron Paul and his beef with the Civil Rights Act of 1964:
I recently tried to explain Ron Paul to a very liberal friend of mine whose parents are from the former Soviet Union. She liked the idea of ending the war on drugs and the one in Iraq. She liked the idea of the Constitution as a Contract. So she went and told one of her friends about what she'd learned and her friend brought up segregation as being an example of a time when government had every right to overstep its bounds.
The next night we were out on a date and she asked me about this issue. I tried to explain the position of Dr. Paul's I'd read, but I didn't do a great job of it. I promised her I'd get back to her. I sent her a message with a few of my thoughts but basically just a link to Dr. Paul's speech explaining his opposition to recognizing the bill on its 40th anniversary.
I also wrote (http://www.geocities.com/freedomphiles/archives/son.html) once about the CRA, as well:
For generations, corrupt and bitter little white men upheld Jim Crow Laws, government's attempt to suppress the equalizing forces of the market. The Jim Crow Laws forced businesses to not serve or hire blacks. Think about that for a second. Why would there be a law if that kind of discrimination was the status quo? Because it wasn't – the self-interested lure of green burns far more brightly than the blackness of organized hatred. So someone had to step in and stop the market forces – the Jim Crow laws.
That is where the CRA comes in. It was supposed to end the Jim Crow Laws and stem the tide of racism, but have we reached a world where, as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. put it, we are judged "not on the color of our skin, but on the content of our character?" Of course not. We have not become a color-blind society. If anything, we are more acutely aware of race than ever before in our society. We've been segregated and labeled, and pitted against one another to fight for a little more power – some advantage over another group that the government deems "different" from us one way or another. But, as Rand said, "Remember also that the smallest minority is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities."
There is no such thing as group thought or group identity. The only person you are just alike is you. The only person who can know what you need and what is best for you is you. The only person who can speak for you is you. To think that someone can or is entitled to speak for you because they share a skin-tone or a love for same-sex romps with you is short-sided and pretty fucking stupid.
Understanding and love is a virus. It spreads wherever truth is present. Truth cannot be present where coercion exists. In the world, things progress naturally at a steady, healthy pace, and right when it looks like things are getting better every day, the government smells what's in the air and tries to help it along with legislation. This results in a stagnation of progress, a polarizing of races, genders, and orientations, endless legal problems, and an entrenchment of the more extreme haters on either side of the issue, acting as "representatives" of their race, gender, or orientation, which naturally leaves many people in the middle with the misinterpretation of those as the views and values of the mainstream. Then you have three years of race riots immediately following the passage of the Civil Rights Act.
It was originally intended to end the practice of hiring, firing, serving, promoting, and the such based on race or sex. It was not supposed to give anyone an advantage over someone else, but that was impossible. Just by saying that you cannot do that is saying you don’t have to worry if you hire most of the minorities that come through your door. It was wrong right away to tell people who they could and could not hire and fire. To say that there should be no law passed that discriminates is fine and consistent with our liberal tradition and our constitution – the government does not have freedom of association. A law written this way would have ended the Jim Crow laws and equalized the legal support for anyone trying to make it in the world. But the act itself, opposed by racists and non-racists alike, was wrong from the start. In fact, it only passed as a tribute to the slain John F. Kennedy, to secure his legacy.
The LewRockwell.com blogs has a piece warning (http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/019602.html) people to beware the false Ron Paul Republicans:
Ron Paul's success in building a big, enthusiastic grassroots movement brings with it a serious problem: the potential for phony Ron Paul Republicans who seek to take advantage of it.
This was made clear to me when I read an interview in my neighborhood newspaper with a candidate for Congress who had appeared numerous times at local Ron Paul Meetup events posing as a Ron Paul Republican. He didn't mention it to Ron Paul supporters, but he told the paper that "the surge is working." I see now that his website adds that "Americans prefer victory to defeat" and that "President Bush executed the war exactly the way it should be executed." In other words, the candidate who was happy to allow Ron Paul supporters to think he was one of them is, in fact, a John McCain Republican. (He also supports socializing the "legal industry" -- a prospect I find particularly distasteful!).
More success will attract more characters like this, of course. Such is politics.
But of course, it is also good to remember that Ron Paul supporters are not groupthing sheeple, and can have differences of opinions on various topics. I think a dogmatic adherence to the exact platform of Ron Paul would be as dangerous as having no principles at all.
That's not to say that some diversions are just too much to handle - like if I started pushing war with Iran or socialized medicine. That said, though, let's try to keep some perspective before we start labelling people.
Mark Silva writes (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-nader_silvafeb25,1,1657208.story) in The Chicago Tribune that Nader's candidacy is being met with a hearty yawn, as the disaffected have found someone else to love:
"There is unhappiness in the electorate, and Texas Republican Rep.] Ron Paul's bid captures that anger," Geer said. "But Ralph Nader is not the vehicle for the expression of this discontent. Nader was a spoiler in 2000 and will long be remembered for that. But when he ran in 2004, few cared.
CNN wrote (http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/21/texas.poll/index.html)a piece about Texas and the chance for Ron Paul to be a spoiler:
However, a conservative third-party candidate could skew the results -- and spell trouble for McCain, according to polling results. In that scenario, 19 percent of Texas poll respondents said they would vote for the third-party candidate, 37 percent for McCain and 41 percent for Obama.
Interesting. What's more interesting is reason's David Wiegel explaining (http://www.reason.com/blog/show/125101.html) the significance, and how Ron Paul could get around pesky election laws:
Hm. A "conservative third-party candidate" with a Texas political base and the financial power to make a real run at this. Maybe a far-right congressman who refuses to endorse McCain and could run around the state warning Republicans that the GOP candidate supports amnesty and wants to extend the Trans-Texas Corridor to Nunavut. Can you think of anyone who'd fit the bill?
Oh, I know the argument that Paul would pull more votes from the Democrat since he'd be running against the war. That was true when Hillary Clinton was the frontrunner, but it's not going to be true if Obama gets the nod. The disgruntled vote will be all ornery Republicans who can't believe their party nominated "McVain." And if there isn't quite enough of that to give Texas to Obama, there could be enough to make McCain waste precious time and money in a state that went to Bush over Kerry by 23 points.
UPDATE: Texas election law is here. I know that Paul could not follow the usual protocols for a third party candidate as long as he's running as a Republican for the House. Texas isn't Connecticut. But I believe the LP might be able to nominate a placeholder candidate, yank him or her, and replace him with Paul. This is what Republicans tried to do with Tom DeLay, although he failed to meet the deadline and they eventually had to run an election with no GOP candidate. In that election the GOP told voters to write in a city councilwoman: She scored 42 percent of the vote this way. So that's another possible way for a purged Paul to screw with the GOP.
Ron Paul still says he's not going to run independent or 3rd party, but if he somehow loses that seat in Congress, it could change everything.
Finally, L Neil Smith writes (http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2008/tle457-20080224-02.html) about what he thinks the is best way to battle the corrupt establishment:
For almost forty years, now, I've been watching the Libertarian Party try to achieve what amount to revolutionary goals by working "within the system". Like many of my readers, I've shivered in the rain or broiled in the sun collecting petition signatures, exhausted myself in what turned out to be comic relief campaigns, been held up to ridicule by media so putrescently corrupt they glowed in the dark like rotten fish, only to see our hopes dashed cruelly in elections rigged in several different ways against us by those who own the process.
The only thing that makes today's Ron Paul campaign different is how openly crooked the establishment has been in opposing it. You're seeing it, too. From denying this year's only peace and freedom candidate his rightful place in the debates, to failing to count his votes—or simply giving them to another candidate—the system has proven willing to destroy itself in order to save its clients and patrons.
For four decades we have been playing on their field, with their bat and ball—and more importantly, their umpire—and wondering why we can never win. It is time to change that, and I believe I know how.
Think about the American Revolution, think about the Vietnam war, think about Pyrrhus. What if there were a way to double the cost of the other guy's victories? What if we could make staying in office so costly they were forced to change their system, either to accommodate us or to exclude us completely—which would destroy their system altogether?
See ya tomorrow, Freedomphiles!
http://www.brendangates.com/forumlogo.jpg
Ron Paul Roundup (02-25-08)
by RS Davis (http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=194780914&blogID=361303947&Mytoken=FD09E5EE-4817-44DC-AB34B0593D42B8F572688)
Hello Freedomphiles! Got an interesting Roundup together for you today. Let's start with The Dallas Morning News, who is reporting (http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/politics/state/stories/DN-ronpaul_24tex.ART.State.Edition1.4681760.html) about Ron Paul's fight with Chris Peden over his house seat:
It's tough to think of a political endeavor more audacious than trying to unseat a 10-term member of Congress – except, perhaps, to attempt a jump from the U.S. House to the Oval Office as an anti-war Republican.
Voters in the 14th District get to choose between two such dreamers – Rep. Ron Paul, the odd man out at one GOP presidential debate after another, with his call for a return to the gold standard, an end to the drug war and a radically shrunken federal government; and a challenger who has forced him to divert time and money into protecting his seat by painting him as ineffective, overly idealistic and out of touch with local issues.
The challenger, Chris Peden, portrays himself as everything the incumbent isn't: a loyal, mainstream conservative Republican. Dr. Paul is determined to keep his seat, pleading for support in part to ensure that critics can't paint a loss as a rejection of his ideas.
"You can send a message with your presidential vote, I don't care," Mr. Peden told a couple of dozen voters the other night at a clubhouse on Tiki Island, a fishing village across the causeway from Galveston. "But this district demands representation. It demands aggressive, conservative, hard-working representation."
A half-hour up the road, Dr. Paul had spent part of his afternoon working a business crowd at a Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership meeting on the campus of NASA's Johnson Space Center.
"He's got my vote. He votes his principles," said Bill Quinn, the budget and accounting officer at Texas Chiropractic College. He chalked up Dr. Paul's primary challenge to a shady effort to knock him off stride in the presidential fight.
Jeff Mapes also commented (http://blog.oregonlive.com/mapesonpolitics/2008/02/paul_and_kucinich_face_battles.html):
Paul appears the most endangered. He trailed his challenger by 11 point points in a recent poll.
Now, as I have already mentioned, there is no poll out there saying that Ron Paul is in any danger. In fact, most polls have him leading with 60% of the vote. In fairness, the first article, from what I saw, didn't mention the bogus poll, and Jeff Mapes retracted once someone brought it to his attention.
Now, all the big news seems to be coming out of Austin, where a Ron Paul rally had a whopping 4000 people show up. Businesswire reports (http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20080223005024&newsLang=en):
Today, Republican presidential candidate and Texas Congressman Ron Paul addressed a large crowd of students and supporters on the main mall of the University of Texas in Austin. University of Texas campus police estimate that a crowd of 4,000 people attended the event.
"Dr. Paul's conservative message of low taxes, limited government and strictly following the Constitution resonates with voters here in his home state of Texas," said Ron Paul campaign chairman Kent Snyder.
Blues guitarist and singer Jimmie Vaughan played for the crowd before Dr. Paul spoke. In Vaughan's endorsement of Dr. Paul, the guitarist and singer said, "He knows the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and he always votes for the Constitution."
Jimmie Vaughan, eh? What a legend, man. Big bro to Stevie Ray Vaughan, lead singer of completely underrated band The Fabulous Thunderbirds, I say of that endorsement: Wrap it up. I'll take it.
Mitzie Stelte wrote (http://herald-zeitung.com/story.lasso?ewcd=0222db07304e37e1&-session=HeraldZeitung:40DA3C4E05724387F6OyN3C6F1B8 ) a more artistic description:
As a prop plane with a banner bearing the likeness of Texas native son Ron Paul circled Saturday afternoon, his supporters flocked to the University of Texas' main mall where they danced while Jimmy Vaughan sang "Down with Big Brother."
Excitement built as more and more people showed up to hear the Republican underdog speak on one of his presidential campaign stops throughout the state before the March 4 primary.
President of UT Students for Ron Paul, Chris Robertson, incited the crowd even more as he introduced the longtime U.S. Representative.
Robertson downplayed the success of Republican front-runner John McCain, who holds a nearly insurmountable lead over Mike Huckabee while Paul is a distant third.
"We're Texas," Robertson exclaimed. "Who cares what those other states are thinking!"
And Heidi Zhou wrote (http://www.news8austin.com/content/headlines/?ArID=201189&SecID=2) about it for Austin's News8:
It was at an Austin rally that Ron Paul's dream for the 2008 presidency first took shape one year ago.
"That is when it sort of dawned on me that this could be something different," Republican presidential hopeful Ron Paul said.
About 4,000 people cheered on the Texas congressman at Saturday's rally at the University of Texas.
"I want to honor Ron Paul. I think he's the most courageous man in this country and the world," Laine Jastram said.
The Houston Chronicle talked (http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5564994.html) to Paul before the rally about an independent bid:
Acknowledging his imminent failure, maverick Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul said Saturday that he won't get back into the race for the White House as an independent candidate once a GOP nominee is solidified.
"I have no plans to do that," Paul told a small group of reporters before a rally. "I would suspect that if we don't win, if the trends continue we're not likely to win, that I will run for Congress."
Lew Rockwell quotes (http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/019591.html) Rick Fisk:
"My family went to see Dr. Paul speak yesterday at UT's main mall. What a crowd and what a speech! When we approached from Guadalupe, it seemed the entire city had become Ron Paul's own. There was a plane dragging a banner overhead and all manner of people with their Ron Paul signs and stickers arriving. That bell you see Dr. Paul ring just before the Texas straw poll was there as well. Both of my daughters wanted to ring it. When I took them down to ring the bell, who should be just arriving but Dr. Paul himself! It was the closest I ever got. I wanted to get a picture of Dr. Paul and my 9-year-old daughter ( who canvasses the neighborhoods with me ) after his speech but there was just no way. He was definitely a Rock Star. There was a huge crush to get a handshake or signature.
"Three local TV stations were there to cover the event which made me mad actually. All of this blackout and now they show up. It was a great speech. 4000 is probably just shy of the number. Jimmy Vaughn played his brother's 'Texas Flood' to close his show and then told us all about how he supports Ron Paul and no one else. It was a great day."
Here's the rally:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bFbFk2D1V8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyfi0lDwm8c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEv1sWjM58A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TMpI4Zeeps
On a more policy-oriented front, right-libertarian John Armstrong writes (http://www.nolanchart.com/article2891.html) on The Nolan Chart about the idea of blowback:
How in tarnation could someone listen to Ron Paul talk about terrorism and think that he was blaming America for what happened when the world stopped turning that September day nearly 7 years ago?
I wanted to share the quote and my thoughts about it with you.
When addressing how what seemed like corporate price gouging and profiteering could actually be a good thing while good intentioned government intervention could ultimately hurt the people the program was originally designed to help, the author used the example of gas shortages in the 1970's. This shortage was caused by government price controls. I'll spare you the simple economics behind this, but the fact that price controls cause shortages is inarguable. However, there is a lag time between the implementation of these controls and the fuel shortages they caused. Because of this non immediacy, when the shortage inevitably came, many more articles were written blaming the evil corporations for the shortages than the government price controls. Which brings us to the analogy.
The author stated that if one were to strike a match, but it took a day for the head to burst into flame, many people would not be able to see the correlation between the striking and the fire.
So why do people not understand what Ron Paul is talking about when he talks about blowback? We are incredibly short sighted as a nation in terms of cause and effect. The match called blowback sometimes takes decades to burst into flames.
It sounds like Dr. Paul is blaming America even when the former head of the CIA's Bin Laden unit all but says that Rep. Paul is the only candidate left who understands the root cause of terrorism during an interview on Hannity and Colmes.
People are funny.
Yes, they are. Especially people who say things like, "How in tarnation?" But I keed, I keed. It was actually an interesting piece.
The guy he's talking about is Michael Scheuer, by the way.
In other policy-oriented writing, John Armstrong wrote (http://www.nolanchart.com/article2894.html) about Ron Paul and his beef with the Civil Rights Act of 1964:
I recently tried to explain Ron Paul to a very liberal friend of mine whose parents are from the former Soviet Union. She liked the idea of ending the war on drugs and the one in Iraq. She liked the idea of the Constitution as a Contract. So she went and told one of her friends about what she'd learned and her friend brought up segregation as being an example of a time when government had every right to overstep its bounds.
The next night we were out on a date and she asked me about this issue. I tried to explain the position of Dr. Paul's I'd read, but I didn't do a great job of it. I promised her I'd get back to her. I sent her a message with a few of my thoughts but basically just a link to Dr. Paul's speech explaining his opposition to recognizing the bill on its 40th anniversary.
I also wrote (http://www.geocities.com/freedomphiles/archives/son.html) once about the CRA, as well:
For generations, corrupt and bitter little white men upheld Jim Crow Laws, government's attempt to suppress the equalizing forces of the market. The Jim Crow Laws forced businesses to not serve or hire blacks. Think about that for a second. Why would there be a law if that kind of discrimination was the status quo? Because it wasn't – the self-interested lure of green burns far more brightly than the blackness of organized hatred. So someone had to step in and stop the market forces – the Jim Crow laws.
That is where the CRA comes in. It was supposed to end the Jim Crow Laws and stem the tide of racism, but have we reached a world where, as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. put it, we are judged "not on the color of our skin, but on the content of our character?" Of course not. We have not become a color-blind society. If anything, we are more acutely aware of race than ever before in our society. We've been segregated and labeled, and pitted against one another to fight for a little more power – some advantage over another group that the government deems "different" from us one way or another. But, as Rand said, "Remember also that the smallest minority is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities."
There is no such thing as group thought or group identity. The only person you are just alike is you. The only person who can know what you need and what is best for you is you. The only person who can speak for you is you. To think that someone can or is entitled to speak for you because they share a skin-tone or a love for same-sex romps with you is short-sided and pretty fucking stupid.
Understanding and love is a virus. It spreads wherever truth is present. Truth cannot be present where coercion exists. In the world, things progress naturally at a steady, healthy pace, and right when it looks like things are getting better every day, the government smells what's in the air and tries to help it along with legislation. This results in a stagnation of progress, a polarizing of races, genders, and orientations, endless legal problems, and an entrenchment of the more extreme haters on either side of the issue, acting as "representatives" of their race, gender, or orientation, which naturally leaves many people in the middle with the misinterpretation of those as the views and values of the mainstream. Then you have three years of race riots immediately following the passage of the Civil Rights Act.
It was originally intended to end the practice of hiring, firing, serving, promoting, and the such based on race or sex. It was not supposed to give anyone an advantage over someone else, but that was impossible. Just by saying that you cannot do that is saying you don’t have to worry if you hire most of the minorities that come through your door. It was wrong right away to tell people who they could and could not hire and fire. To say that there should be no law passed that discriminates is fine and consistent with our liberal tradition and our constitution – the government does not have freedom of association. A law written this way would have ended the Jim Crow laws and equalized the legal support for anyone trying to make it in the world. But the act itself, opposed by racists and non-racists alike, was wrong from the start. In fact, it only passed as a tribute to the slain John F. Kennedy, to secure his legacy.
The LewRockwell.com blogs has a piece warning (http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/019602.html) people to beware the false Ron Paul Republicans:
Ron Paul's success in building a big, enthusiastic grassroots movement brings with it a serious problem: the potential for phony Ron Paul Republicans who seek to take advantage of it.
This was made clear to me when I read an interview in my neighborhood newspaper with a candidate for Congress who had appeared numerous times at local Ron Paul Meetup events posing as a Ron Paul Republican. He didn't mention it to Ron Paul supporters, but he told the paper that "the surge is working." I see now that his website adds that "Americans prefer victory to defeat" and that "President Bush executed the war exactly the way it should be executed." In other words, the candidate who was happy to allow Ron Paul supporters to think he was one of them is, in fact, a John McCain Republican. (He also supports socializing the "legal industry" -- a prospect I find particularly distasteful!).
More success will attract more characters like this, of course. Such is politics.
But of course, it is also good to remember that Ron Paul supporters are not groupthing sheeple, and can have differences of opinions on various topics. I think a dogmatic adherence to the exact platform of Ron Paul would be as dangerous as having no principles at all.
That's not to say that some diversions are just too much to handle - like if I started pushing war with Iran or socialized medicine. That said, though, let's try to keep some perspective before we start labelling people.
Mark Silva writes (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-nader_silvafeb25,1,1657208.story) in The Chicago Tribune that Nader's candidacy is being met with a hearty yawn, as the disaffected have found someone else to love:
"There is unhappiness in the electorate, and Texas Republican Rep.] Ron Paul's bid captures that anger," Geer said. "But Ralph Nader is not the vehicle for the expression of this discontent. Nader was a spoiler in 2000 and will long be remembered for that. But when he ran in 2004, few cared.
CNN wrote (http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/02/21/texas.poll/index.html)a piece about Texas and the chance for Ron Paul to be a spoiler:
However, a conservative third-party candidate could skew the results -- and spell trouble for McCain, according to polling results. In that scenario, 19 percent of Texas poll respondents said they would vote for the third-party candidate, 37 percent for McCain and 41 percent for Obama.
Interesting. What's more interesting is reason's David Wiegel explaining (http://www.reason.com/blog/show/125101.html) the significance, and how Ron Paul could get around pesky election laws:
Hm. A "conservative third-party candidate" with a Texas political base and the financial power to make a real run at this. Maybe a far-right congressman who refuses to endorse McCain and could run around the state warning Republicans that the GOP candidate supports amnesty and wants to extend the Trans-Texas Corridor to Nunavut. Can you think of anyone who'd fit the bill?
Oh, I know the argument that Paul would pull more votes from the Democrat since he'd be running against the war. That was true when Hillary Clinton was the frontrunner, but it's not going to be true if Obama gets the nod. The disgruntled vote will be all ornery Republicans who can't believe their party nominated "McVain." And if there isn't quite enough of that to give Texas to Obama, there could be enough to make McCain waste precious time and money in a state that went to Bush over Kerry by 23 points.
UPDATE: Texas election law is here. I know that Paul could not follow the usual protocols for a third party candidate as long as he's running as a Republican for the House. Texas isn't Connecticut. But I believe the LP might be able to nominate a placeholder candidate, yank him or her, and replace him with Paul. This is what Republicans tried to do with Tom DeLay, although he failed to meet the deadline and they eventually had to run an election with no GOP candidate. In that election the GOP told voters to write in a city councilwoman: She scored 42 percent of the vote this way. So that's another possible way for a purged Paul to screw with the GOP.
Ron Paul still says he's not going to run independent or 3rd party, but if he somehow loses that seat in Congress, it could change everything.
Finally, L Neil Smith writes (http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2008/tle457-20080224-02.html) about what he thinks the is best way to battle the corrupt establishment:
For almost forty years, now, I've been watching the Libertarian Party try to achieve what amount to revolutionary goals by working "within the system". Like many of my readers, I've shivered in the rain or broiled in the sun collecting petition signatures, exhausted myself in what turned out to be comic relief campaigns, been held up to ridicule by media so putrescently corrupt they glowed in the dark like rotten fish, only to see our hopes dashed cruelly in elections rigged in several different ways against us by those who own the process.
The only thing that makes today's Ron Paul campaign different is how openly crooked the establishment has been in opposing it. You're seeing it, too. From denying this year's only peace and freedom candidate his rightful place in the debates, to failing to count his votes—or simply giving them to another candidate—the system has proven willing to destroy itself in order to save its clients and patrons.
For four decades we have been playing on their field, with their bat and ball—and more importantly, their umpire—and wondering why we can never win. It is time to change that, and I believe I know how.
Think about the American Revolution, think about the Vietnam war, think about Pyrrhus. What if there were a way to double the cost of the other guy's victories? What if we could make staying in office so costly they were forced to change their system, either to accommodate us or to exclude us completely—which would destroy their system altogether?
See ya tomorrow, Freedomphiles!
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