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View Full Version : Ron Paul: A Lesser Evil?




TheBlackPeterSchiff
04-28-2011, 09:33 AM
Great read by a liberal blogger.


Ron Paul is far from perfect, but I’ll say this much for the Texas congressman: He has never authorized a drone strike in Pakistan. He has never authorized the killing of dozens of women and children in Yemen. He hasn’t protected torturers from prosecution and he hasn’t overseen the torturous treatment of a 23-year-old young man for the “crime” of revealing the government’s criminal behavior.

Can the same be said for Barack Obama?

Yet, ask a good movement liberal or progressive about the two and you’ll quickly be informed that, yeah, Ron Paul’s good on the war stuff — yawn — but otherwise he’s a no-good right-wing reactionary of the worst order, a guy who’d kick your Aunt Beth off Medicare and force her to turn tricks for blood-pressure meds. By contrast, Obama, war crimes and all, provokes no such visceral distaste. He’s more cosmopolitan, after all — less Texas-y. He’s a Democrat. And gosh, even if he’s made a few mistakes, he means well.

Sure he’s a murderer, in other words, but at least he’s not a Republican!

Put another, even less charitable way: Democratic partisans – liberals – are willing to trade the lives of a couple thousand poor Pakistani tribesman in exchange for a few liberal catnip-filled speeches and NPR tote bags for the underprivileged. The number of party-line progressives who would vote for Ron Paul over Barack Obama wouldn’t be enough to fill Conference Room B at the local Sheraton, with even harshest left-leaning critics of the president, like Rolling Stone‘s Matt Taibbi, saying they’d prefer the mass-murdering sociopath to that kooky Constitution fetishist.

As someone who sees the electoral process as primarily a distraction, something that diverts energy and attention from more effective means of reforming the system, I don’t much care if people don’t vote for Ron Paul. In fact, if you’re going to vote, I’d rather you cast a write-in ballot for Emma Goldman. But! I do have a problem with those who imagine themselves to be liberal-minded citizens of the world casting their vote for Barack Obama and propagating the notion that someone can bomb and/or militarily occupy Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen and Libya and still earn more Progressive Points than the guy who would, you know, not do any of that.

Let’s just assume the worst about Paul: that he’s a corporate libertarian in the Reason magazine/Cato Institute mold that would grant Big Business and the financial industry license to do whatever the hell it wants with little in the way of accountability (I call this scenario the “status quo”). Let’s say he dines on Labradoodle puppies while using their blood to scribble notes in the margins of his dog-eared, gold-encrusted copy of Atlas Shrugged.

So. Fucking. What.

Barack Obama isn’t exactly Eugene Debs, after all. Hell, he’s not even Jimmy Carter. The facts are: he’s pushed for the largest military budget in world history, given trillions of dollars to Wall Street in bailouts and near-zero interest loans from the Federal Reserve, protected oil companies like BP from legal liability for environmental damages they cause – from poisoning the Gulf to climate change – and mandated that all Americans purchase the U.S. health insurance industry’s product. You might argue Paul’s a corporatist, but there’s no denying Obama’s one.

More here: http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/04/ron-paul-a-lesser-evil/

ravedown
04-28-2011, 09:40 AM
this person makes some great points that strike right at the heart of many progressive libs. especially his line about status quo, perfect. i may want to hang onto this letter and spread it around to lib friends.

TheBlackPeterSchiff
04-28-2011, 09:50 AM
this person makes some great points that strike right at the heart of many progressive libs. especially his line about status quo, perfect. i may want to hang onto this letter and spread it around to lib friends.

Im sure there are a good bit of liberals that feel this way. The real liberals not the political liberals.

rprprs
04-28-2011, 09:54 AM
Just a heads up... be sure to read the entire article available at the link in the OP.

TheState
04-28-2011, 09:56 AM
That is an excellent article.

goRPaul
04-28-2011, 10:01 AM
Sure he’s a murderer, in other words, but at least he’s not a Republican!

Nice!

White Bear Lake
04-28-2011, 10:06 AM
Emailed it to a couple of liberals who I think might be receptive to it because I think they are truly liberal and not just Democrat partisans. I'll post their responses on here if I remember.

muzzled dogg
04-28-2011, 10:20 AM
Thanks. Passing to liberals

PermanentSleep
04-28-2011, 10:27 AM
This article clearly shows the difference between a moral liberal and a political liberal. Great piece. Everyone should bookmark for the general.

JohnGalt1225
04-28-2011, 10:39 AM
Great article.

klamath
04-28-2011, 10:41 AM
A really good article. I always praise those liberals that stand up in comments and attack Obama for enacting policies exacly like Bush would have instead of making excuses.

Dreamofunity
04-28-2011, 11:15 AM
Awesome piece.

KramerDSP
04-28-2011, 02:55 PM
Fantastic article! Bump!

Theocrat
04-28-2011, 04:11 PM
Someone needs to post that article at Democratic Underground (http://www.democraticunderground.com/). Those guys over there need their consciences pricked about their hypocrisies towards Obama, for sure.

BarryDonegan
04-28-2011, 04:16 PM
This is a great piece to show progressives!

TomtheTinker
04-28-2011, 04:50 PM
good article for Paul and a decent read as well.

an observation...


Let’s just assume the worst about Paul: that he’s a corporate libertarian in the Reason magazine/Cato Institute mold that would grant Big Business and the financial industry license to do whatever the hell it wants with little in the way of accountability (I call this scenario the “status quo”)

If we only could convince "liberals" (or if they could comprehend) that a centralized government acting with no accountability is far worse and causes much more damage to your everyday joe schmo than a corporation(with out government backing) could ever. This world would be a much better place for liberty.

QueenB4Liberty
04-28-2011, 06:42 PM
That was a great article. I posted it several places.

Mach
04-28-2011, 08:03 PM
Bookmarked, as the election nears and they start crawling out of the woodwork, that article will be one of my replies..... thanks.


Here's a paragraph from another article (http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/10/punish-obama/) that caught my eye..... ;)




The other bogeymen conjured up by the Obamanites are the Koch brothers, libertarian conservatives who draw the poorly penned ire of Frank Rich and Jane Mayer whose accounts are masterpieces of lies by omission. As Justin Raimondo has pointed out in a very informative essay, “What Rich, Mayer, and the other chroniclers of the “Invisible Hands” behind the libertarian-conservative movement elide from their pocket history is the one factor that sets the Kochs apart from post-cold war conservatives (and liberals), and that is their untrammeled anti-militarism. The Cato Institute, which was started with Koch money, stood almost alone in Washington against the first Iraq war [.pdf], and staunchly opposed the more recent invasion – just as they oppose Obama’s wars in Afghanistan and beyond. Cato has also stood up for our civil liberties, opposing the PATRIOT Act, and the whole panoply of post-9/11 repressive measures initiated by the Bush administration and expanded by Obama. Right after 9/11, the Koch brothers gave the ACLU $20 million to fight off the Bushies’ assault on the Constitution (George Soros gave half as much). …. The Kochs stand at the end of a long albeit virtually unknown tradition. The American Liberty League, which Rich and his ideological allies disdain, was financed by many of the same businessmen who later founded the biggest organized peace movement in our history, the America First Committee. A thoroughgoing anti-interventionism motivated these men….” Now isn’t that interesting? And might those who despise war and Empire not find a lot more in common with the Kochtopus than the Obamanite Dems?

harikaried
05-07-2011, 09:58 AM
Found the dissidentvoice article from newser that showed up on google news:
http://www.newser.com/story/118057/is-ron-paul-more-progressive-than-obama.html

Anyone have common responses/comments from people after showing them the article?

georgiaboy
05-07-2011, 10:01 AM
+rep

eta - You have given out too much Reputation in the last 24 hours, try again later.

bookmarking for later repping :D

this read is matrix-glitchingly delicious.

BlackTerrel
05-07-2011, 01:06 PM
Great article. Thanks for posting.

Vessol
05-07-2011, 01:10 PM
Great article. Thanks for posting.

This. Very well written.

AJ187
05-07-2011, 06:00 PM
While I see nothing evil about Paul, I can appreciate this writer's viewpoint. Now if all those college liberal kids who voted in 08' would get on board.

affa
05-08-2011, 01:50 AM
bump -- great article.

KurtBoyer25L
05-08-2011, 02:08 AM
While I see nothing evil about Paul, I can appreciate this writer's viewpoint. Now if all those college liberal kids who voted in 08' would get on board.

Copy, already on it.

oriolesfan
05-08-2011, 02:33 AM
Sent to my friends. Not that many of them are diehard Obama supporters, but I think this article should resonate with everyone re: foreign policy.