Help me refute a very critical Ron Paul post!

[nist7]

The post can be seen here:
http://anonym.to/?http://debateful.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=148

Okay, guys. This guy brings up alot of issues that many critics of Dr. Paul would point out.

I am writing my own rebuttal as I type this but I wanted you guys to contribute as well.

[Adamsa]

He wants to allow schools to have VOLUNTARY prayer if the schools wish allow the children to do so.

The racist stuff is bull, it was written by a ghost writer who got fired immediately after and been rebutted many many times.

Things like alcohol and drugs would be left to the states, no state is going to let minors drink legally.

[misconstrued]

States are free to make any type of minimum wage they want even if there is no federal mandated one...

Does this guy not understand K-12 schools are (mostly) paid for on the local level and getting rid of the department of education doesn't mean people will have to pay for a K-12 education? I have relatives who are teachers and they support Ron Paul. They hate the hoops they have to jump through for the federal government.

Last time I check the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is not in Antartica...

It doesn't matter how long people live in the US illegally. If they are not citizens they are aliens, no? :)

[FreeTraveler]

I generally find that people that are this wrapped up in the "state as nanny" paradigm represent huge investments in time, and you may never see a payoff. Better to spend your energies on some of the low-hanging fruit... people who understand the message of freedom and just need to be shown the right man for the job.

Conversion in this case would require the person to change their entire world-view before they would even consider Ron Paul.

[forsmant]

I'd have to say that the guy is retarded and drawing irrational conclusion from uneducated research. Then I would correct him on each issue that he got wrong.

Illegals are aliens + Illegal aliens. old fashioned maybe.

There is no federal age limit on drinking.

Drugs would still be illegal even if the federal government legalized them. (The states have a lot of laws themselves)

The racism is probably a lie.

I believe the separation between church and state is a voluntary one

Anyone with a house pays for education. I don't know of many federal schools anyway.

Does this guy realize that there are 50 state governments?

[BLS]

That guy is an uninformed idiot.

He knows NOTHING about Ron Paul, and pretends he does.
If you can't rebut him, you need to do some more reading.

[Matthew Zak]

Another 9/11 would be less likely because Ron Paul would dedicate all the money for the military to protect this country -- not interests or footholds in other regions.

Regardless how we all got here, the FACT is, we can not afford to give away free education, health care, and social security to everyone. It's hard enough to get that to the U.S. citizenry, and we should come ahead of illegals. This is especially crucial right now because our country is broke.

As for the environment, it's dangerous to buy into the hype about something that we don't fully understand. 20 years ago we were apparently heading into an ice age. Now it's global warming. The paradigm shift is dictated by politics, regardless how serious the nature. Ron Paul has said that he will not take the environment for granted, and that he's sensative about global warming if it's real -- but he's not jumping on any band wagons until he sees more convincing evidence than that which has been presented.

[hells_unicorn]

Kindly instruct this buffoon that Net Neutrality equals George W. Bush or someone else reading his email or closing his account at their own leisure. When the government runs it, the government sees it. If this fellow is alright with having the Executive Branch give him an anal probe at any given moment, there is no hope.

[MGreen]

That's a horrible post. The guy isn't even trying to understand Paul's philosophy.

[Ron Paul Fan]

This guy is a waste of time. He obviously knows nothing about Ron Paul's views. Freshmen coming to school drunk? That happened all the time when I was in high school! It's not a government problem, it's a parent problem! What's wrong with voluntary prayer? Drugs should be legal. The government shouldn't tell people what they can and cannot put in their own bodies. What an idiot.

[nist7]

That guy is an uninformed idiot.

He knows NOTHING about Ron Paul, and pretends he does.
If you can't rebut him, you need to do some more reading.

I am writing up a massive rebuttal, complete with credible sources!

[davidkachel]

The guy is quite plainly a shill trying to provoke a response. Even Rudy isn't that ignorant of RP's positions. This guy is a fraud. He doesn't really want to know anything.

[BLS]

I am writing up a massive rebuttal, complete with credible sources!


Honestly, I'm SO tired of educating bafoons like this guy, I don't have the energy anymore.

And this person is already SO close minded, you'll NEVER convert him/her.
Waste of time and energy. Some people are liberals, some are conservative.
This dude is a flaming liberal.

I'm not trying to be nasty, and I know you need help, but I just can't deal with guys this stupid.
This is the kind of person who quotes some obscure philospher and passes it off as his own because nobody else is smart enough to question him on it.

[tarsus]

He simply doesn't understand the powers of the federal government.

[Nanerbeet]

Ron Paul's position is the opposite of the socialism; if you agree with socialism, then you are diametrically opposed to Ron Paul's view of small government. You see, in socialism, the government pays for things like school, health care, abortions, contraceptives, environmental research grants, college eduations, housing, etc... using tax payer money. Everybody chips in. Its called socialism. "The government has nothing to give except what it takes from others."

Also, as soon as you get the Government involved with everything, you have to take the church out of it, which is an attack on the religious fundamentals of the nation. Just imagine as soon as they're involved with health care, church run hospitals will vanish off the face of the planet. Thats just absurd.

The answer, in the ideology of the free republic, is to get the government out of our schools, out of our hospitals, out of our churches (thats the reason for separation of church and state), and out of our lives as much as possible. Then instead of paying tax money to send your children to a non-religious, liberal government policy controlled school, you can use that money to send your children to a religious private school, or home school, if you wish. Its about choice, and responsibility.

If you think the government has to provide everything for you, then truely you are a socialist.


[edit] I forgot to mention you can't usually convert a socialist, and by the sounds of things, he is; its a completely opposite philosophy, they aren't really compatible, and its unlikely that you'll win him over. The "liberals" who convert to republican for Ron Paul aren't really liberals at all, they just wanted liberty and didn't know where to look. Since the left usually sells the republican conservatives as self-righteous hate mongering control freaks, the only way to get true freedom is to change the status quo.


Oh... and do you really think literacy rates will go down if we get rid of public education?? Are you serious?!? Its pretty bad as it is!! Data shows private schools are much better at teaching children than public schools. I don't think you can do much worse than a public school to begin with! More and more children are being home schooled because the god-less left is taking control of the education system.


The purpose of government is to protect our liberties, not provide for our entitlements. Its funny how the socialist-liberal stereo-type is usually a college kid who's used to living with their parents, taking hand outs whenever they can, and have nothing better to do than campaign for socialism and environmental-ism.



Its not fair to call all liberals liberals, because I think a lot of them just want liberty. Some liberals don't really tow the left-ist line, they just want freedom of choice. The basic difference between liberals and republicans, I think, is liberals think the government should choose for you, and republicans want to choose for themselves. Work hard and reep the fruits of your labor. Liberals just want to reep the fruits of everybody's labor and distribute the wealth. And thats socialism.

[ProfNo]

I have to say that a major objection that I see from a lot of people regarding Ron Paul is the whole separation of church and state. A lot of libertarians tend to be atheists (as is the case with me), and they tend to hate organized religion as much as they hate government much for the same reasons.

That being said, if I understand Ron Paul's position correctly he would not let the federal government interfere with religion at a local level one way or another. This is probably why the strict separation of church vs state people object as in this set-up you might see, for example school prayer at a local level.

To me, the most important, and encouraging, thing that I have noticed regarding Ron Paul and religion is that he NEVER discusses it. In his emails, at debates, etc. I have never heard him mention god (unlike Huck, for example, who pulls the "lets pray for success" card all of the time). My thinking is that he believes religion is an important part of his life, but should not be discussed in politics as it is really not relevant.

[klamath]

What will they think of next. RP is for instituting NAMBLA. What will they think of next.

[tonyTheBest]

Honestly, I'm SO tired of educating bafoons like this guy, I don't have the energy anymore.

And this person is already SO close minded, you'll NEVER convert him/her.
Waste of time and energy. Some people are liberals, some are conservative.
This dude is a flaming liberal.

I'm not trying to be nasty, and I know you need help, but I just can't deal with guys this stupid.
This is the kind of person who quotes some obscure philospher and passes it off as his own because nobody else is smart enough to question him on it.

It is ok to educate him because we also educate other people that read his website.
It renews about belief of why we support Ron Paul.
I welcome all rebuttal writing.

[gang]

I have to say that a major objection that I see from a lot of people regarding Ron Paul is the whole separation of church and state. A lot of libertarians tend to be atheists (as is the case with me), and they tend to hate organized religion as much as they hate government much for the same reasons.

That being said, if I understand Ron Paul's position correctly he would not let the federal government interfere with religion at a local level one way or another. This is probably why the strict separation of church vs state people object as in this set-up you might see, for example school prayer at a local level.

To me, the most important, and encouraging, thing that I have noticed regarding Ron Paul and religion is that he NEVER discusses it. In his emails, at debates, etc. I have never heard him mention god (unlike Huck, for example, who pulls the "lets pray for success" card all of the time). My thinking is that he believes religion is an important part of his life, but should not be discussed in politics as it is really not relevant.

Separation of church and state was not an federal issue in the original intent of the constitution. This matter was to be dealt by the states.
Murphy's "PIG to American history" is quite interesting to read about it.

[john_anderson_ii]

The whole premise of this guy's post and argument is that he doesn't understand proper levels of government.

These thing's he gripes that Ron Paul will allow wouldn't be allowed at all. They would be regulated at the proper level. The state.

[paulitics]

He simply doesn't understand the powers of the federal government.

Quoted for brevity and truth.

[Ibtz]

Invite him here. We can amicably school him.

[Arklatex]

To find reason in some of Ron Pauls "crazy ideas" one needs to have a study of economics to understand the wonder that is free markets.

KISS with this guy, everyone one of those have a nice rebuttal. Remind him that illegals coming across the border are a slap in the face to the law abiding immigrants entering the country. It is a most imporatnt factor after sept 11th, because we are not in threat of a nation attakcing us, but a few individuals that infilitrate our country; securing our borders should be the #1 issue going into this election.

Remind him that he doesn't need to agree 100%, just more than for any other candidate.

[Matthew Zak]

Look at it this way guys, a liberal took the time to do a quick 5 minute google search on ron paul and took another 10 minutes to write that post. If that casual liberal fella didn't think Ron Paul was a threat he wouldn't have bothered.

He's catchin' on, I'm tellin' ya. ;)

[Goldwater Conservative]

First off, he voted against net neutrality.

He voted against giving government any say in the matter. Giving government monopoly power to regulate the net so it can be made "neutral" also gives it the power to regulate the net for whatever purposes. It's a choice between monopoly control that you think you have a say in (government) and market control that you at least have economic say in (private sector).


He opposes the separation between Church and State.

He's against the politically correct war on religion that wouldn't let kids say prayers in school, but he wouldn't make them say prayers. It's about choice and the real intent of the 1st Amendment: to keep government from establishing a state religion. Really, Dr. Paul probably has the best civil libertarian track record in Congress in a long time.


He also wants to eliminate all public schools including Public Colleges by making them into private schools.

He's for getting rid of federal involvement in the issue and letting states and communities decide for themselves. As far as I know, he's also sympathetic to home schooling and school choice, and I'm sure he would never support anything short of a transition away from public schooling, considering how many people have paid for it with their tax dollars.


He wants to go to Antarctica and drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

You mean Alaska. And yes, he he's not opposed to that, because the evidence hasn't been "slam dunk" for it being environmentally problematic. Also, he probably prefers returning the land to Alaskan control anyway and letting them decide what to do with it. Same reason he opposes dumping nuclear waste in Yucca Mountain. Anyway, he views protecting the environment as protecting property rights, but he doesn't buy into either extreme ("gloom and doom" versus "nothing to see here") since he's been around enough to remember the Ice Age prophecies.


Well, the guy made some racist comments in a magazine about how black people are:

Long since discredited. Nothing in his career or comments he has ever made anywhere could give you the same impression that article did, especially considering his crusade against all forms of collectivism, including racism. Someone else wrote that in a newsletter he lent his name to years earlier. Trust me, politicians never write such periodical publications on their own.


He said that the Civil Rights Act reduced "individual liberties" and says it was a mistake.

He's against the affirmative action components that tells private citizens who they must or must not associate with. His positions all come from a consistent philosophy of libertarianism, classical liberalism, or traditional conservatism (take your pick, the terms themselves don't mean anything). He's not concerned with what it appears like on the surface.


What I can't understand is why he wants to GET RID OF the minimum wage.

If there is to be a minimum wage, it should be at the state level (almost all states have one) so people can match that wage to their local economies as well as "shop around" the various states for those with policies they like. That's the grand democratic experiment, after all.

And economists, even those on the left, generally agree that the minimum wage isn't very effect for a number of reasons, including the fact that most of those affected are already dependents and that it prices many working poor out of the market since employers can't or won't employ as many people with higher labor costs.

He's also more concerned about government spending money it doesn't have, which drives up inflation rapidly and hurts the working class and poor the most.


I can imagine another 9/11 and we just sit there pretending it never happened.

9/11 did not happen because we were isolationist. It happened because we had been playing war games in the Middle East for years, from supporting al-Qaeda and bin Laden when it fought the Soviet Union to buddying up with and putting bases in the Muslim holy land of Saudi Arabia, which coincidentally infuriated an exiled Saudi prince by the name of Osama bin Laden. Even now, we overlook that he's probably hiding in Afghanistan (which is backsliding to Taliban rule) or Pakistan (which is armed with nukes and is a populous military dictatorship yet we subsidize and are friends with), and instead are preoccupied with the occupation of what was a stable secular country with less terrorists and terrorist ties than many of our regional allies but is now crawling with terrorists and is destabilizing the entire region. We've given these evil lunatics a recruiting tool (our occupations) for their murderous organizations at the American taxpayer's expense, all while having our actual national defense weakened because of our overseas commitments and surging gas prices.


Ron Paul voted against a bill that would stop America from trading with the murderers there.

He doesn't believe we should tell the American people who they can or cannot trade with. If the crisis is worrisome enough, people can boycott, although I doubt depriving them of economic activity will help the situation much. Poverty drives people to desperation.


Ron Paul calls illegals, even the ones who have been living here for decades, aliens.

They are. It's a technical term meaning "one who comes from a foreign land."


He wants their U.S. born children to not have education and for their whole families to be taken out of the country.

I don't know if he favors deportation on the spot, but he's a big believer in following and enforcing the law (which is why he's such a critic of the Bush administration's abuse of executive power and Congress allowing the president to go off on undeclared wars). I think denying automatic birthright citizenship is a perfectly mainstream (not that that matters) and reasonable position. He's for a welcoming immigration policy, but also for tight border security to make sure only law-abiding people who aren't going to drain the system get in (weren't you just complaining about his post-9/11 foreign policy?).


Funny how he called the legal immigrants Natives, because the last time i checked, nobody except the Native Americans were the natives.

Even they're immigrants (from Asia). Really, anyone from here is a native.


at that time, most of the people coming to America just came.

And now we have something of a welfare state and there are people out there (as even you admit) who seek to do us great harm. Different times call for different border policies. It's well within the rights of a sovereign republic to make decisions on who can enter their homeland (which it is, whatever demographics existed or injustices occurred in the past).


They will take the age limit off alcohol, guns, and weed.

Where did you get this? Paul wants the issue to be decided at state or local levels, and he probably would still personally favor limits on how any of those could be used, as even many libertarians probably would (laws against children drinking, or drinking and driving, for example). Anarchy and limited government are very different things.

And the war on drugs has not only helped the erosion of our civil liberties, not only are its roots in racist or xenophobic policies, but it has had the same counterintuitive effects, especially on violent crime, that alcohol prohibition had.


And libertarians support NAMBLA.

First, support that claim (since most libertarians that I know of don't think children have the same rights of free association and ability to sell their bodies that adults have). Second, justify its place in an anti-Paul argument, since I KNOW Paul doesn't "support" them or their "right" to practice what they preach.

[nist7]

Goldwater Conservative, thanks for your rebuttal. I have added it to my response.

[lasenorita]

The post is disheartening. Not because it actually addresses issues that one can quite believably disagree with Ron Paul on, but because it creates false arguments and contains uninformed viewpoints.

About Net Neutrality: Net neutrality means the government will impose rules on the Internet --- meaning the government will regulate the internet. This is the furthest thing from freedom. For a better explanation, watch Don't Regulate (http://www.dontregulate.org).

About School Prayer: Ron Paul supports people being able to freely practice their religion. Never mind that school Prayer is the ultimate non-issue. (imho)

About Education: Eliminating the Department of Education does not equate to elimating public schools. It was created in 1979 and need I point out that many Republicans were against its creation? According to Ron Paul, parents ought to have control of education (http://www.house.gov/paul/tst/tst97/tst072097.htm).

And about those racist comments: It's been debunked. Reading Congressman Ron Paul's Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Paul#1996_campaign_controversy)would have cleared up the matter.


"In four terms as a U.S. congressman and one presidential race, Paul had never uttered anything remotely like this."

and

In 2007, with the quotes resurfacing, the New York Times Magazine concurred that Paul denied the allegations "quite believably, since the style diverges widely from his own."

Regarding the minimum wage: It doesn't matter by how many cents Congress raises it if the value of the dollar continues to decrease in value and purchasing power. See what Ron Paul had to say about the Minimum Wage Increase Act (http://www.ronpaullibrary.org/document.php?id=878).


The small business tax relief in this bill is more than outweighed by the provisions raising the federally-mandated minimum wage. While I certainly understand the motivation to help lower wage workers, the reality is that a minimum wage hike hurts lower income Americans the most. When an employer cannot afford to pay a higher wage, the employer has no choice but to hire less workers. As a result, young people with fewer skills and less experience find it harder to obtain an entry-level job. Raising the minimum wage actually reduces opportunities and living standards for the very people the administration claims will benefit from this legislation! It's time to stop fooling ourselves about the basic laws of economics, and realize that Congress cannot legislate a higher standard of living. Congress should not allow itself to believe that the package of small business tax cuts will fully compensate businesses and their employees for the damage inflicted by a minimum wage hike. Congress is not omnipotent; we cannot pretend to strike a perfect balance between tax cuts and wage mandates so that no American businesses or workers are harmed. It may make my colleagues feel good to raise the minimum wage, but the real life consequences of this bill will be felt by those who can least afford diminished job opportunities.

As for Sudan: Hands Off Sudan! (http://www.ronpaullibrary.org/document.php?id=592) and Stay out of Sudan's Civil War (http://www.antiwar.com/paul/?articleid=4053).

Regarding Illegal Immigration: The definition of alien is...


foreigner: a person who comes from a foreign country; someone who does not owe allegiance to your country

Look it up in the dictionary or even Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_%28law%29).

Immigrants who come here illegally are committing a crime and a disservice to the American people. The *current* government is supposed to enforce our *current* laws. Whether or not Ron Paul's great great great great great great grandfather came here illegally is totally irrelevant. Showing preference to those who have violated our laws over the many *legal* immigrants who have worked hard and gone through the legal channels to obtain their visas and/or citizenships is unfair ...and dare I say it? Illegal.

As for being a Libertarian: It depends on your point of reference and how you define "libertarian". Wikipedia defines the term "libertarianism" as usually referring to:


a political philosophy maintaining that all persons are the absolute owners of their own lives, and should be free to do whatever they wish with their persons or property, as long as they allow others the same liberty.

Ron Paul is a libertarian Republican --- one who is for lower taxes, limited government, and non-interventionism. I don't see how anyone could loathe Ron Paul for that, let alone be unable to see the reason behind his ideas when information is so freely available on the internet.