From Prof. David Beito, cowritten with Scott Horton — please see here for more on this feature:
Voters who want more liberty and smaller government have only one realistic choice in the upcoming presidential race: Dr. Ron Paul. No other candidate comes close to matching his record. For more than three decades, he has consistently opposed spending, tax increases and burdensome regulation.
Paul is perhaps the most dedicated defender of free trade in the history of American politics. For this reason, he votes against agreements such as NAFTA, the WTO, and CAFTA, which advance managed trade more than they do free trade; empowering unelected bureaucracies and pitting one country against another. Instead, Paul wants the United States to follow Milton Friedman's call to lead by example, reducing trade barriers, regardless of what other countries do.
"Free trade is not complicated," Paul argues, "yet NAFTA and CAFTA are comprised of thousands of pages of complicated legal jargon. All free trade really needs is two words: Low tariffs." Paul is the best hope to breathe life into the largely moribund unilateral free trade tradition championed by Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Richard Cobden, and Frederic Bastiat. By contrast, Fred Thompson, who is probably the best of the other candidates on this issue, has voted to impose sanctions on Japan for failing to reduce tariffs.
Paul's unilateral approach combined with his calls for a foreign policy of humility, prudence, and diplomacy stands in stark contrast to other candidates who vow to meddle in the foreign affairs of other countries through sanctions and military force. Paul, of course, is the only Republican to call for ending the embargo on Cuba. He insists that private property rights and free markets are the only answers for Latin America, but knows that by trying to force these principles, we only drive their people toward socialism.
Paul breaks completely from the others in monetary policy. His long-term goal is to phase out the Federal Reserve, which he compares to a price fixing agency. As recent events, such as the lending crisis, devaluation of the dollar and roller coaster on Wall Street have shown, the Fed is incapable of managing the money supply in a world of uncertainty and constant flux. Paul would follow the course recommended by Nobel prize-winning economist F.A. Hayek, fully legalizing competition in currencies as well as eliminating legal tender laws and capital gains taxes on gold coinage.
Paul is the most consistent champion of civil liberties in the presidential race. He voted against the PATRIOT Act and has fought against the Real ID, personal income tax and attacks on habeas corpus.
Among the Republicans, Paul stands alone in calling for an end to the ruinous federal war on drugs. By contrast, none of the other Republican candidates will even endorse the moderate reform of letting states legalize medical marijuana. He is also unique in calling attention to the racism inherent in the drug war and the death penalty.
Only Paul has a realistic plan for Social Security. He will allow young Americans to opt out. To pay for the transition costs, and ensure that no one is thrown out on the street, he will close the foreign bases and reorient the military to national defense rather than world policing. Such a policy will foster peace and stability in the world. As examples such as Iraq, Iran, and now Pakistan show, foreign adventurism only leads to blowback and stokes anti-Americanism.
According to Michael Scheuer, the man whose bin Laden Unit at CIA gave Bill Clinton ten chances to capture or kill bin Laden before September 11th, Dr. Paul is the only candidate running who truly understands the terrorist threat and what should be done about it. Paul is determined to finally get those al Qaeda members who attacked and continue to threaten our country, while at the same time reversing the policies that drive their recruitment efforts.
No candidate, of course, is perfect. We differ with Paul on immigration and abortion. Even in these cases, however, he compares favorably with his opponents. While Paul, like Thompson, has spoken in favor of ending birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants, he believes that a Constitutional amendment is necessary to make the change. And although Paul, an obstetrician, favors abortion restriction, he will allow the states to choose. Given the plurality of views on abortion, this is a sensible compromise.
Paul has shown time and again that he will act according to his conscience regardless of the personal consequences. When a draft resister named Paul Jacob went on trial in the early 1980s, Ron Paul did not hesitate to help. At considerable political risk in a time of Cold War, he traveled to the trial at his own expense and spoke on behalf of a powerless young man. This is the kind of courage we need in a president.
Ron Paul, the champion of the Constitution, the Air Force veteran for peace, the doctor for free market medicine, is by far the strongest candidate to face Hillary Clinton in the general election. He is the only member of the Congress to win three times as non-incumbent and has repeatedly won reelection by overwhelming majorities despite attempts of Republican leaders, including George Bush and Tom Delay, to defeat him.
Voters of all political descriptions, including anti-war and Reagan Democrats, independents, moderates, and conservatives have rallied around this man, in large part because they know he means exactly what he says and will stand up for what he believes in. If he wins the Republican nomination, most of the rest of the 68 percent of Americans who say that we're "on the wrong track" so far in this new century will be on board the Revolution by fall.
Ron Paul is hands-down the best hope for real change; for liberty, economic freedom, and limited government in this presidential race. His efforts to spread the message of individualism and constitutional government have already changed America. With your help, Dr. Paul can win and restore the republic.
Related Posts (on one page):
- Prof. Rick Garnett on Why He Supports Fred Thompson for President:
- Prof. Brad Smith on Why He Supports Mitt Romney for President:
- Prof. David Beito and Scott Horton on Why They Support Ron Paul for President:
- Prof. John McGinnis on Why He Supports Rudy Giuliani for President:
- Libertarianish Law Professors on Why They Support Their Presidential Candidates:
Ahhh, the wonders of the "peace dividend".
How in the name of God (literally), is Pakistan an example of America's "foreign adventurism"? To think the troubles in Pakistan only started when we invaded Afghanistan, you have to have a very tenuous grasp on history.
Anyway, I thought Ron Paul was in favor of our invasion of Afghanistan?
If low tariffs are the goal, why should we not impose sanctions on countries which have high tariffs?
I mostly agree with this. It's a shame about his foreign policy stance.
Well, there was our support of Pakistan when they were propping up the Taliban in opposition to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
There's also our continued support of Pervez Musharraf, despite his being a corrupt military dictator.
Why is it that people who see the need for protecting the physicially weak from the strong and ruthless (with criminal laws and police forces) don't see the need for protecting the economically weak from the rich and greedy?
How can a person who is so ignorant about the nature of Social Security be considered a candidate for president? (I concede the incumbent is just about as bad.)
You are purposely conflating two separate issues, our support of Pakistan during the cold war, and their support (not ours) of the Taliban.
In any case, if we were supporting Pakistan, why would that cause "blowback" in, uh, Pakistan?
BTW, are you saying that Pakistan was stable prior to the late 70s?
I think the difficulty is that different people disagree about cause and effect, and cause and effect is hard to prove in these areas. Saying that those who disagree with you are "ignorant" and "don't see" things doesn't really help that much.
No he’s not, by voting against trade agreements that had the aggregate effect of liberalizing trade, Ron Paul is objectively a trade protectionist.
If the plan is, as I suppose it to be, to allow workers to opt out of paying taxes with the the understanding that they would never get benefits, well, you might get a plan like that to work, but it wouldn't be SS, it would be something else altogether.
The Taliban did not even exist during the period of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. The Taliban were born in the early 1990s after the United States had lost interest in Afghanistan and after the adoption of the Pressler Amendment, suspending U.S. aid to Pakistan. Also, the Taliban's rise to power occurred in 1994-1996, during Benazir Bhutto's second term in office. U.S. support or lack of support to Pakistan, whether under military or civilian rule, had little direct effect on Pakistan's pursuit of what it perceived as its own national interests, which in the 1990s revolved around developing a nuclear deterrent capability to match India's and creating greater strategic depth by putting what it perceived as a more amenable regime in power in Kabul.
Of course, a lot of other people would likely move to accepting tips instead of billing customers, should this become law. I can see my legal bills going out with a suggested tip instead of a bill, with the unstated assumption that if the tip is not forthcoming, they will be dropped as clients.
I always thought his rants (which unfortunately infected Balkanization as well) were pretty ridiculous. Now, I can presumptively dismiss anything he says, because I have the ultimate, delegitimizing retort, "Scott H. supports Ron Paul!"
Not conflating, noting that if one looks at periods longer than a few years, our support of bad regimes comes back to bite us in the ass. It's only successful if you look at our support for bin Laden from the time we started funding him until the time the Soviets left Afghanistan. If you keep watching for a few more years, stuff goes a little bad. See also: the Shah, Saddam Hussein, and Pervez Musharraf.
Former CAIR Board Member Backs Ron Paul, Stormfront
Hamas operatives, Ron Paul, Stormfront, and the Council on American Islamic Relations all converge in central Ohio: Anisa Abd El Fattah backs Ron Paul and neo-Nazi STORMFRONT.
Maybe not Taliban qua Taliban, but the leadership of the Taliban was drawn almost exclusively from mujahedeen armed and trained by the U.S. before we lost interest.
What came back to bite us with the Shah was that we did not support him.
And we certainly never supported Saddam Hussein.
As for Musharraf, are you seriously suggesting that we attempt to get rid of him, given the alternatives?
And this would be a bad thing because. . .?
Back to the article, I was kind of distressed by all the peacock language it used. Make it sound less like a press release and more like an essay.
Saying stuff like this does not make it true, unfortunately for you.
Ah, your true "blame America" stripes come out.
We never "funded" Osama bin Laden. He received his funding (as the son of a millionaire, he didn't need much) directly from Saudi Arabia. Being an arab, he didn't find much of a welcome in Afghanistan among the muj, no matter they were fighting on the same side.
In addition, your inclusion of Saddam is incisive. One would think, after all these years, that the fantasy of the U.S. support of Saddam would be finally relegated to the trash heap. It is made-up history.
As far as the Shah goes, the current problem with Islamic fundamentalism traces its roots to the fall of the Shah. IOW, we did exactly what Ron Paul would have wanted, and pulled our support, and in his stead we get Khomeni and the fundamentalists.
Thanks for making my point.
He also called the doctrine of incorporation "phoney." Read here. Voting against these things for purely federalist reasons does not make one a champion of civil liberties.
For example, Ron Paul's foreign trade policy would be a disaster. If a government chooses to subsidize a specific industry in order to defeat US Competition, Ron Paul seems to say "Oh Well!" One can use tariffs to deter this sort of policy from foreign countries, but by taking it off the table wholesale, Ron Paul invites other countries to subsidize one industry after another in targeted attacks on US-competition.
This is a perfect example of the libertarian utopianism that so many people fall into. Like Communism, the "Better Happier World" that proponents claim would never be as simple and elegant as they think.
RP would never have my vote, so I can't say there is any one thing that makes the difference for me where he is concerned. There are a great many things (e.g., we never should have enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964, because it created a bigger problem than the one we had?!). Among the crazy ideas he puts forward, though, one of my "favorites" is from his cockamamie notions about medicine, something one would expect him not to be profoundly ignorant about. It is profoundly ignorant for a physician to talk about the immune systems of children being "overwhelmed" by the 4 or 5 vaccines they are given in a day as he does. And I must go see where he has elaborated on his assertion that prescription drugs are more dangerous than "hard" drugs. I'd rather have someone who knew nothing of science/medicine in the White House than someone with a combination of knowledge and ignorance like Paul's to make them really dangerous.
TomB:
The National Security Archive at George Washington University and the Boston Globe suggest otherwise.
After being one of only four Congressmen to support him for the nomination in 1976. Reagan's failure was to accomplish what he came to Washington to do. GWB's failure is the same.
Dear God.
If that is true (and I'm not calling you a liar doc, I just want to confirm this myself), I will go from an occasional mocker of the good doctor to an active opponent. The overwhelmed immune system argument is word-for-word from the anti-vaccine nutjobs. These people try to scare parents into not getting their kids immunized. And there is a special place in hell for these monsters.
Is there a conspiracy that Paul doesn't beleive? How about the Moon hoax?
OOOHHHH! The Rumsfeld/Hussein handshake photo!
Nowhere in those links was any evidence we either created or propped up Hussein. We shared intel, mainly, with him during the Iran/Iraq war.
If we gave him so much support, why are our soldiers being shot at with AK47s and not M16s? Why were all the armor and jets of the Iraqi armed forces Soviet?
And I can't help but notice you completely ignored the points made about the Shah and OBL.
According to a previous post, it's a different Scott Horton. I'm sure you'll come up with other retorts.
It took all of 10 seconds on google to spew forth a plethora of Ron Paul anti-vaccination links.
The man is a monster.
Because American consumers benefit from low tariffs regardless of other countries' policies. We get cheap goods from other countries. It is their loss if they want to tax our goods.
Yea, he still mentions that on his website. Why advertise you supported a "complete failure"?
EVERYTHING? Like defeating Communism? Rebuilding the military? Lowering taxes?
You do realize that, even if he does become President, he won't accomplish everything he sets out to do, don't you? We elect a President, not dictator.
And for as much as an utter failure Ron Paul claims Reagan to be, why does he have pictures of Reagan and YouTube videos bragging of what Reagan said about him?
He must have a thing for failures...
That does not answer the question I asked.
If low tariffs are the goal, why should we not impose sanctions on countries which have high tariffs?
And you are claiming that tariffs are good for us. That being the case, you must support tariffs. Yes?
On what charge?
"Following the Constitution too closely," perhaps?
Or, "Failure to ignore his oath of office?"
So...overthrowing democratically-elected Mohammed Mosadegg and installing the unelected Shah was also a good idea? Or did you simply temporarily forget that inconvenient truth?
1953 Iranian coup d'etat
P.S. If another country's government carried out a covert operation in which widespread bribery resulted in a democratically-elected U.S. president being overthrown, and an unelected dictator installed, would you consider that to be wrong on the part of the other country's government?
I'd be greatly appreciative if you could point out where I said anything like that.
Thanks in advance.
Oh, really? You mean, all of these items in Wikipedia are wrong?
U.S. government support of Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war
A bigger problem is that Paul's antipathy towards NAFTA shows his lack of common sense. Is NAFTA 'pure' free trade? No, of course not. Was a vote against NAFTA a vote for more free trade, though? No. It was a vote for less free trade. Making the perfect the enemy of the good is fine for a pundit, but not for an officeholder, and certainly not for a president.
Well, you said that the U.S. government's failure to continue supporting the Shah was what led to his overthrow...and you blamed Ron Paul because he would have done the same thing.
But you conveniently neglected that what caused the Shah to be in power in the first place was a coup d'etat supported by the U.S. government (and which would NOT have been supported by Ron Paul)!
So don't you think you're doing just a little bit of cherry picking in your criticism of Ron Paul?
I could find Paul speaking against forced immunizations, and his supporters talking about them being dangerous, but I had to go here to find the words coming from Paul's mouth. My bad transcription follows.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f74xvtRijMc
YouTube video of him saying "there are dangers of taking vaccines, there's also many blessings with vaccines. When I was in high school, friends and neighbors got polio and died. That vaccine has been fantastic. We've gone way overboard. GWS is related to vaccines, among other things. ... Doctors have gotten to the point when they give too many too often, 4 or 5 in a bunch and they overwhelm the immune system. In a free society, it would be assumed that the individual makes up their own mind, and immunization shouldn't be a condition of them going anywhere, anyplace. ... If you haven't taken the polio vaccine, you're not a danger to me. You're endangering itself. I don't like the idea of the use of force. ... "
Yes, is that in dispute?
Please explain exactly how not mentioning the coup is "conveniently" neglecting anything, when it has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the point. Mr X. is the one who brought up the Shah, not me. His point was that our support of the Shah was bad, I posited otherwise.
How the Shah got BACK into power is a complete strawman in this discussion.
No; it's just false. We didn't "install" the Shah. The Shah was the head of state. It was Mossadegh who tried to force him out.
And Mossadegh was not "democratically elected" except in the loosest sense -- he was chosen by the Iranian Parliament, after Iranian fundamentalists assassinated the existing prime minister. Even if we define the term "democratically elected" to mean "chosen as the end result of a democratic process," the term can obscure as much as it reveals. Hitler, to once again jump to the classic example, was "democratically elected" (by that definition). But that hardly made him a legitimate head of state whose government was to be respected. (I expect that if the U.S. had supported a coup against him in 1934, we'd probably be hearing about how evil the CIA was for doing so.)
Mossadegh was legitimately chosen, sure. But by the time of the so-called "coup," he was hardly the democrat that "democratically elected" paints him as. He had seized (much as Hitler had) emergency powers through demagoguery, and then suspended Parliament, giving himself unchecked power. It's not like ousting the prime minister of Canada. Just because a guy was legitimately chosen when he first took office doesn't make him a democrat.
But perhaps most importantly, the idea that we "installed" someone is a huge misnomer. It was *Mossadegh* who was acting extraconstitutionally, and the Shah was the head of state. The Shah was authorized to replace him, and tried to do so; Mossadegh refused to leave, and in fact tried to force the Shah out. That ultimately led to fighting, and Mossadegh was ousted in the conflict, in part by people funded by the British and CIA.
An utterly amazing statement coming from a doctor.
Its like he's never heard of "herd immunity".
The fact is that since vaccines are NOT 100% effective, you are completely dependent on as many others being immunized as possible, to reduce the chance of those who are not completely immune to be protected.
The man's an embarrassment.
Ummmm...because we did? Lend-lease? WWII?
Don't you think it is at least plausible that Nazi Germany would have defeated the Soviet Union in WWII, if the U.S. had not supplied $11 billion ($154 billion in 2007 dollars) of lend-lease aid to the Soviets?
Here's about half of the list (from wonderful Wikipedia):
Aircraft 14,795
Tanks 7,056
Jeeps 51,503
Trucks 375,883
Motorcycles 35,170
Tractors 8,071
Guns 8,218
Machine guns 131,633
Explosives 345,735 tons
Building equipment valued $10,910,000
Railroad freight cars 11,155
Locomotives 1,981
Cargo ships 90
Submarine hunters 105
Damn you for posting that, I was saving it for later!! ;-)
Excellent point.
I'm suprised Mark missed that...
And?
Was that wrong?
To listed to Paul and Mr. X, since Stalin was a bad guy, we were wrong for "supporting" him.
Which is it?
Oh yeah, those central banks are god's gift to the green earth eh? Well you can't support The Rule of Law and central banks at the same time, so I guess we know where that puts you.
Well, there's obviously no way to reverse history to see what would have happened if the U.S. had done things differently. And more importantly, I have no idea what Ron Paul's opinion would have been on this.
But yes, I think the U.S. government should not have supported the Soviet Union in WWII. The U.S. should only have supported Britain, and let Stalin go it on his own, without U.S. aid (to win, lose, or draw).
And yet this subject brings up some real hatred and ad hominem attacks. What I don't understand is why.
I'm not sure what that has to do with the price of tea in China (so to speak). Our government (the U.S. government) supported a coup d'etat in Iran in 1953. Now, Ron Paul would not have supported the U.S. government in doing that.
Ron Paul has been criticized because he wouldn't have continued support to keep the Shah in power in 1979. Does anyone think that he should ALSO be criticized since he wouldn't have supported the U.S. government's involvement in the 1953 coup d'etat?
Or do we all agree that the U.S. government's (covert) involvement in the 1953 Iranian coup d'etat was wrong?
Reading through your list, I'd revisit the "information" you are using to come to your conclusions.
I don't support the mandatory HPV stick, but the rest of your post is inaccurate.
And most of the anti-vaccine people that I've run into aren't about "current methods", they are into scaring parents into not getting their kids immunized.
Ah, the beauty of condemning tens of thousands of allied soldiers to death for principle!
VIVA ISOLATIONISM!
Amazing.
YOU are the one who dragged Mossadegh into the discussion.
Because the Soviet allied Mossagdeh was attempting to usurp power from the legitimate head of state, the Shah. Thus, backing the Shah was the right call, because it:
a: supported an established, stable government.
b: blocked a Soviet move to establish influence in Iran.
You keep using the word coup d'etat, but a I think this word does not mean what you think it means. Action in support of the legitimate head of state is not a coup d'etat.
I should have put "government's" in quotation marks, since I'm pretty sure there was no Congressional yes/no vote on whether or not to provide funds to support the coup d'etat. In fact, I'd be willing to bet there were members of Congress who did not even know that the Executive Branch was providing support for a coup d'etat in Iran in 1953.
Britt, go back and read Mark's posts and a single thread emerges, the US is evil and ANY action outside our border is wrong. Anybody so morally bankrupt who would say our support for Stalin was wrong doesn't deserve to be listened to.
And I suppose you were told this by...God?
Or are you referring to the Soviets when you're referring to "allied soldiers"? (Note that even that assertion is debatable!)
The simple fact is that no one can know what would have happened in WWII, if the U.S. had not supported the Soviet Union with lend-lease. Maybe the world would have been a better place. I think it would have been, because I think the Nazis might have taken Stalingrad, and driven the Soviet Union out of the war. Then, when Hitler was defeated, there would also be no Stalin. That would have prevented the enslavement of Eastern Europe following WWII.
But maybe the world wouldn't have been a better place. Short of finding an alternative universe where the U.S. did not support the Soviet Union, there's no way to know.
I'd say our support for Stalin was morally wrong, but war is not about being morally right, war is about winning. I would not want Americans to wade ashore on the Cotentin Peninsula against the panzers and grenadiers who had crushed the Red Army. That would have been a bloodbath, and we would have either lost or taken a whole lot longer to win. Stalin, and all the madness that was his regime, was necessary to win that war.
Morality and Foreign Policy do not mix all that well. Yes, our foreign policy can have good results. Going back to the Stalin example, we could end up with one of two options:
A. Hitler dominates Europe, slaughters all the Unetmensch, "a new Dark Age made all the more sinister by the lights of perverted science", etc.
B. Western Europe remains free, Eastern Europe dominated by the Soviets.
Now if we'd have listened to Patton in 1945 maybe we could have pushed the Sovs back to Russia, let them collapse on their own, etc. But that's venturing far off the beaten track of counterfactual history. The point is that option B, while not ideal, is far better then option A. We live in an imperfect world, and hindsight is always 20/20. I think everyone would do well to remember that.
Maybe we should also debate whether we should have intervened in Hungary in 1956, Kosovo in '98, Rawanda in '94, Darfur now, whether I should have gone over and talked to the blond at the bar in 1993, etc.
So we let the Germans beat the Russians, then really quick while they have their backs turned, or are all drunk off that good Bavarian beer, we sneak in and take the flag away?
The German Army in the Soviet Union was the finest army ever. No one has ever kicked so much ass in such a devastating manner. The Russians though, had the advantage of being willing to burn up 20 million of their citizens. They had the advantage of not having to worry about the political cost of high casualties. Which is why they were ideal for sopping up the majority of the Nazi empire's best troops.
Please refrain from discussing history. You just embarrass yourself.
How easily that statement rolls off of your keyboard!
How would Hitler have been defeated? Pixie dust?
With the blood of US soldiers. There is no other way.
I don't need God to tell me that.
David - you don't subscribe to the late 1990s dotcom business model of losing money on every sale but making it up in volume? :-D
Ordinarily, "dumping" is economically self-defeating and I'm in full agreement with taking advantage of it. However, the use of slave labor complicates this question.
Nick
The point of bringing Stalin into the discussion is to show how vapid the Paulies are when they try to shame the US by bringing up the involvement with less than savory characters.
Foreign policy is never simple. I sometimes requires involvement with people you'd rather not be involved with. And to take the Ron Paul isolation route, is a recipe for disaster.
"Injection lovers"?
No hiding where you are coming from.
But as I said earlier, your information is way out of date.
For instance, the "toxic preservatives" you mention is thimerosal, and it has been out of children's vaccines since 2000.
Odd that autism is still so prevalent. All the anti-vacciners told me thimerosal caused autism, now there's none in vaccines, yet kids still get autism. Odd, that.
I'm not for stopping discussions, just try to get up to date here, huh?
You know nothing. You don't have even a clue who I am.
This is also clueless nonsense. I just wrote that the U.S. should have supported Britain in WWII.
In fact, I've also written (repeatedly) that the U.S. government should remove all troops from Iraq, and fund all Iraqi government operations (including police, military, and judges) for a period of 2-3 years.
How we screwed up in Iraq, but still might recover
And I've even written (repeatedly) that the U.S. government should thoroughly investigate and consider the idea of funding the military of dictatorships to perform coups, provided those militaries agree (and in fact achieve) democratic replacement governments. I've even coined a name for it..."Rent a Coup." I even advocated it as an alternative to invading Iraq.
"Rent a coup" described in 2003
But this should be done ONLY if the U.S. Congress authorizes the funding, because the U.S. Congress thinks the government in question poses a danger to the U.S.
The U.S. Constitution does not authorize the President to make war without a Congressional Declaration of War.
Yes, he would have only been defeated by the blood of U.S. soldiers...plus the blood of Soviet soldiers. (Not to mention British soldiers...and all our other allies.)
The question is, would there have been more death, destruction, and misery--in WWII and after--if the U.S. had not given so much aid to the Soviet Union under Lend/Lease.
And the answer is...no one knows. (But God...if She exists.)
I know, its nice to remain ideologically pure. But doesn't the outcome, and let's be honest, we both know what the casualties would have been, bother you even a little bit?
And once again, your source on this is...God?
Ron Paul's non-interventionist viewpoint is extremely compatible with the non-interventionist viewpoints of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson:
Two men who shared Ron Paul's philosophy
Sorry, I'm only concerned with the immediate outcome of the war. There can be no debate that more US servicemen would have died without a strong Soviet Union. But if you are concerned with Soviet lives, how many would have died in and unsuccessful defense of the motherland?
Face it, Stalin was much better at killing his own people in war than he was in peace. (peasants take so damn long to die)
Chuckle.
The Pasha of Tripoli was unavailable for comment.
And Merriwether Lewis was just here a minute ago....
You have no damn clue what the casualties would have been if the U.S. had not supported the Soviet Union. No one does.
U.S. and British casualties could easily have been less. Even Soviet casualties might have been less (if the Soviets had simply surrendered).
If the U.S. had developed the atomic bomb on the same schedule, but Germany had still been in the war, a bomb probably would have been dropped on Berlin. It's difficult to imagine how Germany would have stayed in the war if an atomic bomb had been dropped on Berlin while Hitler was in his bunker.
Who knows what Japan would then have done? No one knows, so it's completely ridiculous for you to posture as though you've got the answers.
That's complete rubbish. There may be "no debate" in your mind, but that would only be because your mind is closed. The U.S. might well have ended the war with Germany with atomic weapons, rather than battles fought on the ground.
There's simply no way to judge, absent an alternative universe.
Just damn.
Yea, you're right, that could have happened....
I can't imagine even thinking something so silly.
But you're right, we just don't know, Stalin may have woken up one day a reformed Christian, and then, maybe Broadway???
I have no idea. And neither do you.
Yes, all alternative endings change the nationalities (and whether those deaths are military or civilian). But it is not even possible to say in which direction.
You could say (as you have) there "there can be no debate"...but that's nonsense. It's like saying "there can be no debate" that Babe Ruth would have had better stats than Barry Bonds, if Ruth had played in Bonds' time. Or Bonds had played in Ruth's time.
....about anything.
That frame of mind probably comforts you, but it shouldn't.
Yes that is one of them but no it is still in every FLU shot not to mention all the vaccines we export to the third world. Also it is still in every vaccine in trace amounts. Last even if thimerisol doesn't cause autism what does that have to do with improving the science of vaccination? My whole point is there is something wierd about people who are so adamant that our methods are safe. Have you taken a look at the CDC lately? Where do you get your confidence?
The others?
Since we're talking pediatric vaccines on that schedule, I don't include the flu vaccine.
Link?
The "science of vaccination" is the eradication of smallpox, polio and other diseases, thanks to vaccines. The "science of vaccination" is also that there is a increase in diseases like pertussis and measles when people were frightened into not having their kids immunized.
I look at the CDC all the time but I'm not sure what you are getting at. The current vaccine schedule is very safe and, more importantly, constantly reviewed, if not by doctors, then by malpractice lawyers looking for a big score.
There are no secrets. I'm not sure what more you want, other than to ask more general, misleading questions.
Embarrassment?
Do you honestly fret about the risk that other people skipping vaccinations has on your health? Vaccines many not be 100% effective, but they are still extremely effective. (Afterall, if they were *that* ineffective, why force anyone to get a shot in the first place?).
I'm going to go out on limb here and wager that the actual risk to you of Stupid Guy not getting his shots is infinitesimally small. I don't think it should keep you up at night worrying. In any event, what is more effective: (1) getting a booster shot or (2) placing blind faith in herd immunity?
Compulsory immunization for children is needed to protect children from stupid parents. But I don't buy this "herd immunity" justification one bit.
Vaccine injuries are rare, but they definitely happen. Every now and then a child dies from a vaccine. You can read about these incidents here (Uncle Sam gives parents of dead children $250k):
http://www.uscfc.uscourts.gov/OSMPage.htm
I support compulsory vaccination for children (so save the straw men for Dorothy). That said, knowing that vaccines can in rare cases hurt and even kill, its amazing that there are people that can't even fathom that there is any possible moral dilemma, here.
Anyhow, this piece does nothing to convince me that Dr. Ron Paul is the last and best hope for America. I am already convinced, as of a year ago! Ha!
You mean he would have fought to the death...sort of like Hitler?
This idea may be totally new to you, but armies sometimes surrender even when fanatical megalomaniacs dictators tell them to fight to the death. (The death of the armies of course...not the dictators cowering in the rear.)
Sort of like your frame of mind that "there can be no debate" about what would happen if history were fundamentally altered comforts you?
I admire your perseverance here, but... have you noticed you're not making much headway?
Your debate opponents tried to suggest that anyone was an idiot who thought the US Gov supported the evil Saddam. So, you posted a bunch of details from wikipedia. (In fact, all of us who were adults in the early ‘80s and who followed the news knew all this: it was public, widely discussed knowledge, easily available in the MSM.)
No retractions, no apologies from your opponents.
Mark, they don’t care about the facts.
Your opponents ridicule Ron Paul for attacking the Fed. Of course, the Fed Gov’s own statistics show that, during the nineteenth century, before the Fed, the dollar doubled in value. In the course of the twentieth century, thanks to the Fed, the dollar lost 95 percent of its value.
But, Mark, your opponents are not interested in facts.
Politics can be summed up in the classic phrase “Cui bono?’ Who gains?
While most Americans have suffered from the welfare-warfare state of the last century, some people have gained from the welfare-warfare state: defense contractors, professors at tax-funded universities, welfare whores, etc.
It’s a good guess that your opponents here are members of (or expect to be members of when they grow up) one of those privileged groups that actually does benefit from the welfare-warfare state at the expense of those ordinary Americans who give their money (and sometimes their lives) to support the privileged parasites.
You might as well try arguing with an antebellum slaveowner about the costs of slavery or with a nineteenth-century Junker about Prussian imperialism. Folks like this have already chosen sides: they know what will benefit them.
They will never vote for Ron Paul, and given the personal choices they have made, they’re making a valid decision.
Dave
However, future generations might not even remember this year's party nominee so much as the Congressman from Texas, and his unheeded diagnosis and medicine to fix this Republic before it slipped into irrevocable decline.
The others?
How about Aluminum?
but no it is still in every FLU shot
Since we're talking pediatric vaccines on that schedule, I don't include the flu vaccine.
not to mention all the vaccines we export to the third world.
Link?
Wikipedia do?
Outside North America and Europe, many vaccines contain thiomersal; the World Health Organization has concluded that there is no evidence of toxicity from thimerosal in vaccines and no reason on grounds of safety to change to more-expensive single-dose administration.
Alan Greenspan must also be "nutty" since he also favors the gold standard. Albeit he differs from Paul in thinking there is no realistic prospect of its return so does not actively promote it. "A" is the whackjob here in claiming that the gold standard promotes inflation. In fact Greenspan in his book accurately observes that inflation as we know it was "essentially nil" under the gold standard and is a political fact of life under fiat currency (he observes it has averaged 4.5% over the post-gold standard history of the Fed and will likely in the future over the long term average this rate -- a rate that would be quite extraordinary under a gold standard).
As for vaccines, I trust Dr. Paul far more on the subject than any lawyers in this forum. He's basically putting forth a libertarian position -- not on a subject where libertarianism makes the strongest argument, but that hardly make him as much a "nutcase" as for example the economic theories of "A" and others on this forum make them.
BTW, check out the latest studies on flouridation of water -- it turns out the libertarian "nutcases" may have been rather right on that one.
Yes. Wonderful Wikipedia. It's great...but I do wonder about this statement from Stalin's biography:
I think someone mixed together two separate sentences there! :-)
Yes...it seemed possible that some weren't adults in the 1980s, to make the incredible statement that, "...we certainly never supported Saddam Hussein."
(!!!)
Possibly, but I care about the facts. That's the main reason I comment anywhere on the Internet. Supporting my comments forces me to check the facts.
Well, this Christmas I was reading David McCullough's "John Adams" (just the first 200 pages...Mr. McCullough certainly writes alot!). One thing struck me is how much the Founders risked. Adams could have been a very successful Braintree/Boston lawyer. I don't think that, "...pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor" was just talk.
I prefer not to discuss (or even consider) motives. I'd rather stick to the facts and opinions.
For example, if abandonment of the Shah was wrong in 1979, what about the U.S. government's role in the 1953 overthrow of Mohammed Mosadegg? Was that right?
It's interesting that I never did get an answer to that question (as far as I can see).
That brings up an interesting debate I had on the Science Guy website, wherein I argued that not only was Lincoln not the greatest president ever...he wasn't even a particularly good president. (And that Washington was without question the greatest president ever.)
The greatest president?
I didn't change anyone's mind there, either. But the more I checked the facts, the more certain I was that I was right. Lincoln was an eloquent speaker, but not a good president.
Probably not. But maybe someone will be reading who has not made up his or her mind. I want them to know that, if they are at all interested in a president who will follow his oath of office to "Preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution," that Ron Paul is the only choice. On that score, Ron Paul versus other candidates is like Tiger Woods versus high schoolers.
Ron Paul again is proposing in his ‘‘Cost of Government Awareness Act of 2007’’
[ http://www.govtrack.us/data/us/bills.text/110/h/h3601.pdf ]. His rationale is that by eliminating income
tax withholding &having taxpayers pay in monthly installments, taxpayers will become aware of the true
cost of government.
I read Paul's proposal &my understanding is that it would change the modified quarterly
payment calendar [April 15th, June 15th, September 15th &January 15th] of estimated taxpayers
to a monthly payment calendar beginning with February 15th. [See Page 4, SEC. 4. MONTHLY PAYMENTS
OF ESTIMATED TAXES of the above cited pdf file.]
Paul had introduced this same legislation in 2000 [ http://www.house.gov/paul/legis/106/hr4855.htm ].
At that time I called his office &spoke to his staffer in charge of taxation about whether this proposal
actually changes the payment calendar to a monthly basis for estimated taxpayers to which he replied yes.
I pointed out that estimated taxpayers who receive dividends, the monthly payment schedule would
cause taxes to be paid on income not yet received &in some cases before the date of record. [Dividends
are usually paid quarterly &most often sometime in March; thus the current first quarterly installment
on April 15th is consistent with a pay-as-you-go tax collection system.] The staffer's response can
be paraphrased as "tough".
Another strange item in the legislative proposal is that the monthly payments would be 8.25% rather
than 8.375%. [12 x 8.25% = 99%]. Wouldn't this put the taxpayer subject to penalty &interest for a
shortfall of estimated payments which are currently the lesser of 100% of last year's taxes [110% for
higher income &certain separate filers] or 90% of the current year's estimated taxes?
The underlying assumption of Paul's legislation that taxpayers are unaware of how much they are
paying in taxes may be true for employees but is not true for estimated taxpayers who write checks
to the U.S. Treasury [IRS] &spend many hours estimating [and re-estimating] their tax liability.
Ron Paul advocates smaller government. How many thousands more IRS employees would have
to be hired to process the millions of monthly payments [including bounces, missing
SSN's, and wrong SSN's] and to chase down those who just don't pay?
Now you’re really gonna get yourself in trouble – you criticized Lincoln! Among the hangers-on of the American Establishment, that’s like visiting the Vatican and dissing the Virgin Mary.
Seriously, I think I would have liked Lincoln as a person – apparently, he was a gawky, kind of nerdy fellow with a great sense of humor. But, he did fail to prevent the worst war in US history, a war that cost the lives of over half a million Americans. It’s rather remarkable that he is considered one of the country’s greatest Presidents – after all, LBJ is despised for causing the deaths of well under a hundred thousand Americans.
You also wrote:
> I prefer not to discuss (or even consider) motives. I'd rather stick to the facts and opinions.
An excellent idea in discussing science or even serious scholarship about history, politics, etc. But some of the discussants here, by their remarkably ignorant (and remarkably belligerent) comments about Saddam, have shown that scholarship is not exactly their strong point.
I’m afraid that politics is about motives – I don’t think it can be avoided.
As to the Founders, yeah, a remarkable group of guys, despite their many and all too human flaws. But I think the underlying source of their greatness was not their own personalities, but the power of their ideas. They actually understood and believed in the idea that all human beings had certain natural rights and that no government was justified in infringing those rights. I doubt that any of the folks you were debating with here could even explain what the Founders meant by “natural rights.” (If anyone does care to learn, try reading Murray Rothbard’s “The Ethics of Liberty” for a contemporary discussion or A. John Simmons’ books if you want a longer, more academic discussion, or go back to the classical source, John Locke’s “Second Treatise on Civil Government,” and try to actually understand it this time.)
Whether Ron Paul wins or loses, perhaps the most positive result of his campaign will be the beginning of a rebirth of interest in the basic political ideas of the American Founders.
Dave
Congressman Paul has made clear that he wishes to abolish the income tax: that would make the issue moot.
Yeah, everyone, I know, wanting to abolish the income tax makes him a “nut-job,” even thought the country did not have an income tax throughout most of its history. But, hey, whatever you liberals have put in place can never be tampered with, right?
Like the roach motel – you can check in, but you can’t check out!
Dave
A free society shouldn't require any of them. But since the government picks up the bill for people who fail to protect themselves, we require people to take care of themselves.
Saying that the government shouldn't be forcing kids to be vaccinated is a pretty common libertarian tenet, btw. One of VC's regular contributors did a series on it within the past year or two, trying to figure out how forced immunizations could fit into a libertarian mindset. He did a pretty good job, but got raked over the coals nonetheless.
I'm not sure I agree that people should be able to opt out of immunizations, but saying that people should have the freedom to do that is not an insane theory. (The individuals themselves who make that choice may be stupid, but one of those ugly components of freedom is that we let people make bad choices for themselves.)
Ron Paul wants to abolish the income tax [which I favor],
but he has formally introduced legislation to abolish withholding tax
that concomitantly accelerates the estimated income tax payment
schedule to the point where income tax will be collected on income
which has not been received. Before you start throwing around the
liberal canard, fill in a pro-forma 1040-ES using Ron Paul's proposed
legislation which I cited. I ran the pro-forma scenerio &found that I
would be paying 8.25% of my tax liability with the first installment
[Feb. 15th], while only having collected 0.23% of my taxable income.
That's preemptive taxation.
Yes, Dave, I recommend a training course (which I've never taken myself ;-)) on how to persuade people. I'd expect and hope that such a course wouldn't focus on calling people names and casting aspersions on their motives. It would instead (I hope) seek to agree on facts, separate facts from opinions, and agree that sometimes people dealing with the exact same facts can have different opinions, without either opinion being clearly wrong.
Maria S, I don't really know anything about estimated taxpaying, but it does seem like you have identified a clear problem. People should not be paying taxes on income they haven't even earned yet! Further, Ron Paul's staffer's response (as you relate it) seems amazing and pathetic. ("Bad staffer! Bad staffer! No!" ;-)).
Would a solution to your problem be to pay taxes quarterly...and perhaps with a one-quarter delay between earning and paying? For example, you earn money from January to March, and pay the tax on like July 1? (And then pay for April to June on like September 1?)
Would that work?
P.S. If it is any consolation to you, I think it's highly unlikely that Congress would ever vote to end withholding. It allows them to collect taxes without people really seeing clearly the amount of money that's being spent on those taxes. I don't think Congress is likely to give up that power any time soon. (Even if Ron Paul is elected President...which doesn't seem very likely.)
2) There was no "terrible cost in freedom." There was a net benefit in freedom.
3) "State's rights" was not at issue in the conflict between the north and south, and of course "state's rights" is not a libertarian principle in any way, shape, or form. To quote Ayn Rand: " The Southern racists' claim of 'states' rights' is a contradiction in terms: there can be no such thing as the 'right' of some men to violate the rights of others."
I consider Lew Rockwell to be a racist. I reached this conclusion by hearing him speak at the 1994 national YAF convention. Several portions of his speech made it clear that he regarded black people as inferior and incapable of reasonable self-government.
Looking at a few Von Mises Institute newsletters from the mid-1990s confirmed this belief.
Nick
It would be interesting to look at all the shot record data for the children and grandchildren of pediatricians and immunologists. Comparing this to the shot records of the general public might be an eye opening experience.