Ron Paul, leaps of logic
Son,
Ron Paul’s candidacy for president is not unusual. Every election draws fringe candidates – candidates who generally focus their energy on single issues, make their splash, and then go away. Ron Paul is different in that he addresses multiple issues – but more importantly – he is actually attracting an audience. This success says more about our traumatized population than it does about Ron Paul.
Ron Paul takes huge leaps of logic. Some of Ron Paul’s positions and ideas: Eliminate the Income Tax – that would result in a loss of about a trillion dollars from Federal Tax Revenues. Immediately withdraw all troops from Iraq, regardless of consequence. Return to isolationism – take care of America and to hell with the rest of the world.
Ron Paul has stated that our government has been run by secret conspiratorial groups such as the tri-lateral commission and the Masons. He claims that Abraham Lincoln erred by entering the Civil War. His logic is very simple: There are secret organizations and important people belong to them – thus these secret organizations run the government. Mark Twain said, “I left the South and they lost the war.” Mark Twain was trying to be funny – Ron Paul is serious.
Ron Paul claims that we do not need the income tax if we no longer police the world. His proposal of withdrawal from Iraq follows this logic. His thoughts on secret organizations and on Abraham Lincoln demonstrate that he is disconnected from reality.
The real story here is in the amount of support he is generating. That support speaks to the level of discontent in our general populace – and to the failure of our system of education. A good education is the best inoculation against loonyness. Who are these people who give money to Ron Paul? Why are they so willing to stake their future on bizarre logic? This zaniness also speaks to the depth of the Republican Party in general.
Ron Paul is a phenomenon that will bear study in the future.
Dad
Comment by Ben on 26 December 2007:
Calling Ron Paul an isolationist is like calling your best neighbor a hermit because he doesn’t do donuts in your lawn or throw bricks through your windows.
His foreign policy is one of communication and vigorous international commerce. The people currently in power, who choose war instead of diplomacy, perpetually alienating the rest of the world from America, are the isolationists. Only a crackpot would think he could threaten half the middle east with violence and not have it damage his credibility.
I also fail to understand what is so fringe about looking back at the 1860s and stating the obvious: 600,000 people didn’t have to die to end slavery. The war was over taxation and an imbalance of states’ influence at the federal level. Some years into the war Lincoln made it about slavery, and when he did, he only freed southern slaves, not northern ones. Every other civilized country was able to do away with the barbarism of slavery without bloody wars. Is America so different, are Americans so obtuse, that a similar solution was out of their grasp? Only crackpots can look at a half-million dead and think it was a good thing.
And finally, it is not crazy to note what the CFR, the Trilateral Commission, and men like David Rockefeller say about themselves. These are people who believe in supranational authority, the obliteration of national sovereignty (especially of the USA), and they happen to have many powerful people in their ranks. It might be mocked here in the US, in spite of those in our country working toward it, but some people in Canadian and Mexican government will talk openly of a North American Union. Denial of this reality is the domain of crackpots.
I guess the real question is: With at least seven candidates in the Republican race, why are they all crackpots but one?
Comment by David on 26 December 2007:
I can only agree with what Ben has said. At one point in American’s history we were respected. Now we are hated not because of what we have but because of what we do. When did we stop living by the golden rule.
Comment by Allen Short on 26 December 2007:
Where did Ron Paul say that these groups “run the government”? It’s hardly conspiracy-theory lunacy to point out that the many high-ranking government officials belong to certain organizations and infer that the views espoused by those organizations have some influence on those officials’ behaviour.
As for Lincoln’s war, what makes you think it was necessary? What made this country so unique that it couldn’t resolve its slavery problem peacefully like the rest of the world did? You claim he’s “disconnected from reality” — a better way to phrase it would be “disconnected from the official dogma”.
Comment by James Pollock on 28 December 2007:
Dad: “Ron Paul is a phenomenon that will bear study in the future.” Son: (…Pops has stroked out…)
Comment by Son on 29 December 2007:
Dad,
Your statement that Ron Paul’s candidacy is not unusual was my first indicator that you don’t understand what is taking place in America. Your characterization of Ron Paul as a fringe candidate shows me just how out of touch the so-called mainstream has gotten from core American values — values that you and the public education system are failing to teach me. The reason why Ron Paul’s candidacy for president is so unusual is because I, along with millions of Americans, are being re-educated on the American tradition. You mentioned that Ron Paul focuses his energy on multiple issues – you couldn’t be more wrong. Like the doctor that he is, Ron Paul focuses his energy on the source of the problem, rather than merely treating the symptoms. The single issue: reducing government to increase liberty. Ron Paul is attracting an audience because he has the cure for the trauma.
The idea that Ron Paul takes huge leaps of logic just shows me that you don’t have the proper context to understand his positions. No wonder: you grew up in a time of intense government propaganda taught by a government school system bent on shaping your mind. You were taught that people belong to the government for whatever war purposes they engaged in. You apparently believe that the people’s money belongs to the government to. This becomes evident when you pass along the idea that eliminating the federal income tax would result in a loss of about a trillion dollars of tax revenues as though that’s a bad thing. How much better would the American economy be if that money was left in the hands of We the People? How many more jobs would there be? How much more innovation? Who could guess?
You mention that Ron Paul has stated that our government has been run by secret conspiratorial groups such as the tri-lateral commission and the Masons. Of course, he hasn’t said the government was “run” by these groups, but he has acknowledged what should be obvious: there are groups, some of them secretive, who want to claim power for their own greedy purposes. How this comes as a surprise to anyone just reveals just how successful the government run education system has been — it is often said that the greatest success of the devil is making people believe that he doesn’t exist. That seems to be appropriate for this age. It’s hard for me to find fault in someone who not only recognizes the esoteric aspect of politics, but is brave enough to name names. Like several others in my generation, I’ve seen Endgame on Google Video. How much of it is exaggerated might be a legitimate question. What’s not, however, is whether or not these secretive groups exist. They absolutely do, and for what it’s worth – they’re glad that you think people who acknowledge their existence are nuts.
Whatever you want to say about Dr. Paul’s position on Abraham Lincoln, this much I know: the victors write the history. And of course, they teach it in their public school system without regard to the other side of the story. As a young man still exploring history I’ll tell you this: I don’t know if Dr. Paul is right or wrong about Abraham Lincoln, but I know this – he didn’t come to the position without a lot of reading and research on the matter. Anyone who examines Dr. Paul’s positions in any amount of depth will ultimately come to the conclusion that this is a very thoughtful man. And even more, he isn’t afraid to speak the truth as he sees it, regardless of the political consequences of doing as much.
You claim that Dr. Paul is disconnected from reality because he wants to stop policing the world and reduce the tax burden of the American citizen. You claim that he’s a loon, and that his popular support just shows the failure of the education system. Imagine that: thanks to Dr. Paul, you and I can agree on a source of America’s current problems are. Did you know that Dr. Paul wants to eliminate the Department of Education and return the school system to the people rather than Washington bureaucrats? Imagine a school system in which parents and students actually had a choice, rather than having schooling mandated to them by rigid districts. Imagine a school system that taught history from multiple perspectives, rather than just the perspectives of the winners and examined the moral and ethical implications as weighed against the utilitarian aspects of the decisions and determining always and automatically that the ends justified the means simply because we have arrived where we are today because of it. Imagine a school system in which students can be educated, rather than indoctrinated. There’s only one candidate who has the guts to reduce the constricting government enough to allow this to happen.
Finally, you mention that the real story here is the amount of support that he’s generating. That’s only part of the story. The real story is that he’s waking America up from the socialist coma that Woodrow Wilson put this country into. The real story is that the American Tradition is so strong that when people start to wipe the cobwebs from their eyes, they recognize that the Republicans and Democrats have turned into two arms on the same socialist body. The real story is that real REPUBLICanism, in which the founders’ vision of an American republic is emphasized, is making a revival. And it might be just in time to stop the movement toward a North American Union that “the devil” doesn’t want you to know about (but you clearly won’t believe it until it’s finally in our laps, regardless of how much evidence can be unearthed on this subject simply by doing a modicum of research).
You say that Ron Paul is a phenomenon that will bear study in the future. I say “why wait?” Dr. Ron Paul is the single most accessible presidential candidate in the history of the United States. You can hear every speech he’s ever given during his presidential campaign at http://www.RonPaulAudio.com. You can read several of his writings at http://www.RonPaulLibrary.com. His book, A Foreign Policy of Freedom highlights just how crooked, unethical, and plain outrageous our foreign policy has been in language that anyone can understand. Trust me when I say that a lack of education on Dr. Paul’s positions is hardly a problem when it comes to Dr. Paul’s followers. It’s becoming increasingly clear with every attack against him that the same can’t be said for his detractors.
Ron Paul is a phenomenon that bears study now.
Son