NightOwl
04-02-2008, 08:10 PM
From an article that runs online tomorrow, but which I got a look at a little early:
From The Revolution: A Manifesto, Ron Paul's book that will be in stores next week (yes, well before April 30):
On blowback:
"The question [CIA bin Laden expert Michael] Scheuer and I are asking is not who is morally responsible for terrorism – only a fool would place the moral responsibility for terrorism on anyone other than the terrorists themselves. The question we are asking is less doltish and more serious: given that a hyper-interventionist foreign policy is very likely to lead to this kind of blowback, are we still sure we want such a foreign policy?… I have [n]ever said or believed that Americans had it coming on 9/11, or that the attacks were justified, or any of this other nonsense. The point is a simple one: when our government meddles around the world, it can stir up hornets' nests and thereby jeopardize the safety of the American people. That's just common sense. But hardly anyone in our government dares to level with the American people about our fiasco of a foreign policy."
On the idea of a "living" Constitution:
"A 'living' Constitution is just the thing any government would be delighted to have, for whenever the people complain that their Constitution has been violated, the government can trot out its judges to inform the people that they've simply misunderstood: the Constitution, you see, has merely evolved with the times. Thus, as in Orwell's Animal Farm, 'no animal shall sleep in a bed' becomes 'no animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets,' 'no animal shall drink alcohol' becomes 'no animal shall drink alcohol to excess,' and 'no animal shall kill any other animal' becomes 'no animal shall kill any other animal without cause.'"
On civil liberties:
"We have allowed the president to abduct an American citizen on American soil, declare him an 'enemy combatant' (a charge the accused has no power to contest, which is rendered by the president in secret and is unreviewable), detain him indefinitely, deny him legal counsel, and subject him to inhumane treatment.... Have we been so blinded by propaganda that we have forgotten basic American principles, and legal guarantees that extend back to our British forbears eight centuries ago?... Claims that these powers will be exercised only against the bad guys are not worth listening to."
On propaganda:
"Toward the end of 2007, Senator Jeff Sessions declared, 'Some people in this chamber love the Constitution more than they love the safety of this nation. We should all send President Bush a letter thanking him for protecting us.' What kind of sheep must politicians take Americans for if they expect them to fall for creepy propaganda like this?"
On neoconservatives:
"Every last prediction they made about the Iraq debacle – e.g., it would be a cakewalk, the cost would be paid by oil revenues, the prospect of sectarian fighting was slim – has been resolutely falsified by events, and yet they continue to grace the pages of major American newspapers and appear regularly on cable television talk shows. Instead of being disgraced, as common sense might lead us to expect, they continue to be exalted for a wisdom they obviously do not possess. I am reminded of George Orwell’s reference to 'the streamlined men who think in slogans and talk in bullets.'"
On our foreign-policy debate:
"The possibility that we should avoid bleeding ourselves dry in endless foreign meddling is not raised. For heaven's sake, what kind of debate is it in which all sides agree that America needs troops in 130 countries?"
On Iraq:
"The leadership of al Qaeda hoped to lure us into a 'desert Vietnam,' an enormously expensive war that would deplete our resources and help their own recruitment by stirring up the locals against us. And that is just what happened. The war's ultimate cost is being estimated in the trillions. The dollar is collapsing. And more terrorists are being created. According to a study by the Global Research in International Affairs Center in Herzliya, Israel, the vast bulk of the foreign fighters in Iraq are people who had never been involved in terrorist activity before but have been radicalized by the U.S. presence in Iraq – the second-holiest place in Islam.
"The terrorists, in short, have played us like a fiddle."
On the Federal Reserve:
"Even if the Fed chairman really possessed the singular genius our media and politicians regularly ascribe to him, what if things have reached a point at which the Fed simply cannot stop the collapse? What if economic law, which the Fed can no more defy than it can repeal the law of gravity, is about to hit the Fed and the American people like a tidal wave, before which little rate cuts here and there are like the tiny umbrella Wile E. Coyote puts over his head to protect himself from falling boulders?"
From The Revolution: A Manifesto, Ron Paul's book that will be in stores next week (yes, well before April 30):
On blowback:
"The question [CIA bin Laden expert Michael] Scheuer and I are asking is not who is morally responsible for terrorism – only a fool would place the moral responsibility for terrorism on anyone other than the terrorists themselves. The question we are asking is less doltish and more serious: given that a hyper-interventionist foreign policy is very likely to lead to this kind of blowback, are we still sure we want such a foreign policy?… I have [n]ever said or believed that Americans had it coming on 9/11, or that the attacks were justified, or any of this other nonsense. The point is a simple one: when our government meddles around the world, it can stir up hornets' nests and thereby jeopardize the safety of the American people. That's just common sense. But hardly anyone in our government dares to level with the American people about our fiasco of a foreign policy."
On the idea of a "living" Constitution:
"A 'living' Constitution is just the thing any government would be delighted to have, for whenever the people complain that their Constitution has been violated, the government can trot out its judges to inform the people that they've simply misunderstood: the Constitution, you see, has merely evolved with the times. Thus, as in Orwell's Animal Farm, 'no animal shall sleep in a bed' becomes 'no animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets,' 'no animal shall drink alcohol' becomes 'no animal shall drink alcohol to excess,' and 'no animal shall kill any other animal' becomes 'no animal shall kill any other animal without cause.'"
On civil liberties:
"We have allowed the president to abduct an American citizen on American soil, declare him an 'enemy combatant' (a charge the accused has no power to contest, which is rendered by the president in secret and is unreviewable), detain him indefinitely, deny him legal counsel, and subject him to inhumane treatment.... Have we been so blinded by propaganda that we have forgotten basic American principles, and legal guarantees that extend back to our British forbears eight centuries ago?... Claims that these powers will be exercised only against the bad guys are not worth listening to."
On propaganda:
"Toward the end of 2007, Senator Jeff Sessions declared, 'Some people in this chamber love the Constitution more than they love the safety of this nation. We should all send President Bush a letter thanking him for protecting us.' What kind of sheep must politicians take Americans for if they expect them to fall for creepy propaganda like this?"
On neoconservatives:
"Every last prediction they made about the Iraq debacle – e.g., it would be a cakewalk, the cost would be paid by oil revenues, the prospect of sectarian fighting was slim – has been resolutely falsified by events, and yet they continue to grace the pages of major American newspapers and appear regularly on cable television talk shows. Instead of being disgraced, as common sense might lead us to expect, they continue to be exalted for a wisdom they obviously do not possess. I am reminded of George Orwell’s reference to 'the streamlined men who think in slogans and talk in bullets.'"
On our foreign-policy debate:
"The possibility that we should avoid bleeding ourselves dry in endless foreign meddling is not raised. For heaven's sake, what kind of debate is it in which all sides agree that America needs troops in 130 countries?"
On Iraq:
"The leadership of al Qaeda hoped to lure us into a 'desert Vietnam,' an enormously expensive war that would deplete our resources and help their own recruitment by stirring up the locals against us. And that is just what happened. The war's ultimate cost is being estimated in the trillions. The dollar is collapsing. And more terrorists are being created. According to a study by the Global Research in International Affairs Center in Herzliya, Israel, the vast bulk of the foreign fighters in Iraq are people who had never been involved in terrorist activity before but have been radicalized by the U.S. presence in Iraq – the second-holiest place in Islam.
"The terrorists, in short, have played us like a fiddle."
On the Federal Reserve:
"Even if the Fed chairman really possessed the singular genius our media and politicians regularly ascribe to him, what if things have reached a point at which the Fed simply cannot stop the collapse? What if economic law, which the Fed can no more defy than it can repeal the law of gravity, is about to hit the Fed and the American people like a tidal wave, before which little rate cuts here and there are like the tiny umbrella Wile E. Coyote puts over his head to protect himself from falling boulders?"