I thought Ron Paul was anti-war?

[davidt!]

Not according to this video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmIHlomF7hs

[Menthol Patch]

That is really cool.

[DrNoZone]

I wish they'd have used a real voice-over instead of their computer, but that was some funny shite!

[Thom1776]

He is anti-unjustified-unwarranted-military-interventionist.

But fuck with him and see what happens.

[davidt!]

lol, ttt

[Pharoah]

He's a non-invasionist.

[avix123]

Rest assured if another country attacked us, Ron Paul would use the military the way the constitution allows:

Crush them with an iron fist.

[nist7]

Lmfao!

[nist7]

There is a problem though......in 300, the good guys lost in the end.

[ctb619]

who were the "good guys"?

[Cindy]

He is anti-unjustified-unwarranted-military-interventionist.

But fuck with him and see what happens.

And against pre-emptive war and undeclared wars by congress.

It is wrong to say that Paul is anti war.

I do say he is anti the IraqWar and is against bombing Iran for what flimsy reasons are on the table.

I wish people would stop calling him anti war because it's not true and makes him look weak on national defence when he is not that either.

[Politeia]

The film 300 is about the Battle of Thermopylae (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Thermopylae) in 480 BCE, where a suicide squad of 300 Spartans (plus 700 Theban volunteers and 1000 Helots, slaves of the Spartans) held off the massive invading army of Persian emperor Xerxes I long enough for Athens to prepare for the naval Battle of Salamis, which finally defeated the Persians and arguably saved Western Civilization, whose foundation was laid in Greece in the following centuries.

Ron Paul is not a "pure" pacifist, who won't fight under any circumstances. The Libertarian pledge renounces "the initiation of force", but certainly it is legitimate to use force in self-defense. Presumably Dr. Paul would also approve of the use of force in a war against clear oppression, e.g. our own War of Independence -- for which the Declaration of Independence served as a "declaration of war" laying out its reasons "before a candid world."

Dr. Paul simply insists that the Constitutional requirement that Congress formally declare war should be followed. In fact, Congress has declared war in questionable circumstances repeatedly (e.g. against Mexico and Spain, just for starters), but at least the process requires open discussion, which presumably in the present case would have revealed the falsity of the justifications given for invading Iraq before any shots were fired.

[Pharoah]

There is a problem though......in 300, the good guys lost in the end.

The serious question - is Ron Paul for SPARTAAAAAAAAAAAAAA?

[samtechlan]

Of course he is not a pacifist, which is partly the reason why he is one of the greatest supporters of the 2nd Amendment in American history. The right to self-defense is a human right as well as a constitutional one.

[Politeia]

Well, from our point of view, the "good guys" were the Spartans, and though they "lost" the Battle of Thermopylae, their heroic stand resulted in Athens and other Greeks eventually winning the war. If not, perhaps we'd all be speaking dialects of Persian today ... and the history of Europe and the West would have been unimaginably different.

It is one of the paradoxical ironies of history that the earliest infant sprout of what would eventually become liberal, freedom-oriented Western Civilization was preserved from destruction by Sparta, whose political/social organization was perhaps more like the ideal fantasy of the Nazis than any other in history. They were fighting for their "freedom" to live their way and not be conquered by the Persian Empire, but Sparta was not a place where any of us would have wanted to live (especially considering the vast majority of the inhabitants were abject slaves, who were customarily hunted like animals by Spartan youths as part of their training).

[davidt!]

ttt