Ron Paul is Nothing New, Please Stop Eating Your Shit Over Him
I wrote this one while hungover and annoyed with smarmy extremist libertarians.
The 2008 US presidential field is filled with duds and shitheels, but none get me as riled up as fringe Republican candidate Ron Paul. It’s not just his asinine policies, inconsistent voting record and archaic 19th century worldview; it’s also the fact that his hordes of internet followers have been collectively creaming their pants over him for the past 5 months now. It’s admittedly refreshing to see an anti-war Republican on the stage, but that doesn’t justify the cult of personality being built around him, especially when you factor in the fact that he wants to return to the gold standard and phase out public education. Just Google Ron Paul and you’ll find a wealth of bizarre, Stalinist devotion, often manifested in hilariously stupid images such as the one above.
The worst offenders of Ron Paul mania are the masses of 19-year-old, bright-eyed idealists who think that his ideas are new, revolutionary, and would work great if only someone would put them into practice. The obvious punchline is that the US was operating under Paul’s libertarian paradise for basically the first half of its history. And guess what: the food and drug companies didn’t self-regulate in the absence of the FDA (in fact, they were dumping snake oil and arsenic into their goods with impunity), the gold standard wasn’t inflation-proof (Oh how I long to return to constant and wild spasms of inflation and deflation), and a lack of public schools left much of the population too illiterate to perform most of today’s jobs.
So here’s my simple plea to you, you noble captains of the good ship RONPAUL: keep your beautiful dreams of pulling out of Unicef and abolishing the FBI to yourselves instead of spewing your nonsense and peddling your shit candidate on totally unrelated Youtube and Digg comments (Lord knows those outlets already have more than enough retarded in them). Thanks in advance.
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With all due respect sir, please look at a graph of the inflation in the US dollar before and after 1972. Think about what American life was like before 1972, most households were prospering on the income of one salary earner, while today both spouses have to work just to stay ahead of their bills. Why are we working twice as hard with all the advancements that we have made in technology, and only marginally improving?
As far as public education, this nation’s educational performance has been going down since the Department of Education was formed in the late 70s. No one is proposing getting rid of public schools, just the Dept. of Education which has not constitutional authority to exist and does nothing to promote education in the United States.
I doubt that getting rid of the FDA will signal a return to the patent medicine business, and food producers would still be liable to lawsuits which should keep them honest. It seems to me that it was the FDA which banned irradiating food which could stop the ever so frequent outbreaks of e-coli and salmonella poisoning as a political move to protect the dairy industry. Its also the FDA that protects the big pharmacetical industry keeping the prices of medications high.
Even if Ron Paul does win with a mandate, I seriously doubt that he will be able to accomplish much of his agenda, but if he is only able to get us out of Iraq and reform our foriegn policy then that alone will be some serious progress.
Looking at US economic performance with a separation in the 1970s is tricky; one can easily make the argument that American prosperity in the preceding decades had more to do with the fact that the US was the only industrialized nation that wasn’t broke and in shambles after WWII.
My comments about education were admittedly skewed; I consider large voucher programs for private/parochial schools (which Paul supports) to be anathema to the development of public systems, but that’s obviously not the same as wishing to fully do away with public schools (a stance only taken by a wide swath of his supporters).
Your assurances regarding the FDA seem based on faith alone. Why do you suddenly assume that corporate executives became saints in the period between the creation of the FDA and the present day? As for the argument that they’re open to lawsuits and thus the consumer is protected:
-This relies on regular “market correction” periods in which thousands, if not millions of people have to fall ill or die from tainted goods and somehow tie the sickness to a particular product in order to sue.
-But even then, one would have little solid basis to sue, since no universally respected review body would exist to confirm the effects of drugs or foods; we’d have to nothing to rely upon but organizations reliant on private funds, which can (and have) been created by companies to conceal harmful effects of their products.
I’m not saying that the FDA is perfect (far from it!), but history shows us that the alternative tends to be worse, and I have no reason to believe that modern American society has turned us all into ultra-rational actors immune from corruption.
Getting us out of Iraq would indeed be serious progress, but we can just as easily elect a Democrat who will pull out of Iraq, but not out of the WHO and UNICEF for fear of secret cabals out to create a one world government.
very interesting. i’m adding in RSS Reader
Unfortunately sir, either your hangover or your lack of knowledge of the United States Constitution or perhaps your lack of knowledge on the policies of Ron Paul has led you to ignorantly rant about things you know nothing about. However, being a kind soul I shall enlighten you. Rep. Paul has indeed said that the FEDERAL government should not regulate and enforce such things as the FDA does. Those powers you speak of are not clearly expressed as a right of the Federal government in the United States Constitution and therefore those powers and rights are reserved for the states to figure out. The idea being that the Federal government will never amass more rights and privleges than the people that it is supposed to protect. May I remind you sir that it is a slippery slope to facism and no one will announce that we are on our way there. It will happen under your nose and in an act titled something to the tune of “The Patriot Act.”
The activities of the FDA are well within the scope of the Commerce Clause, as the Supreme Court has established. Although I’m wondering why you think that returning the regulation of the sale of food and drugs to the states would be a preferable action; in the best case scenario, we’d have 50 different inherently less effective regulatory commissions, and in the worst case, we’d see a return to what existed before the FDA: a loose patchwork of conflicting regulations in a handful of states that proved incapable of ensuring purity.
Also, thanks for the insinuation that, because I don’t support Ron Paul, I must be some liberty-hating Bush crony. Honestly, it seems like so many Ron Paul supporters consider there to be only two types of people in the US: libertarians and neoconservatives. As a liberal, I care very deeply about civil liberties and have no love for the Patriot Act.
In fact, it’s your slavish devotion to “states’ rights” in all cases that is more condusive to tyranny, as American history shows us; from slavery to Jim Crow, from repression of women to repression of homosexuals, restrictions on civil liberties have invariably been defended and maintained for decades under the banner of “states’ rights.” And, of course, your hero Dr. Paul wishes to turn back the clock to such oppression. Might I direct you to the “We The People Act,” which Paul has introduced to the House multiple times:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:h4379:
In short, this bill would prevent federal courts from hearing cases dealing with the 1st and 4th Amendments and make federal decisions no longer applicable to the states, unless the state courts decided to recognize them later. Basically, it would allow the states to impose censorship, require religious tests and declare state religions, and allow restrictions such as anti-flag burning and anti-sodomy laws to go back into effect. Paul defends this with his archaic belief that the Bill of Rights doesn’t apply to state law; this interpretation was made obsolete with the passing for the 14th Amendment (strange, you’d think a champion of the Constitution would be aware of that).
In summary, Dr. Paul has no problem with tyranny as long as it’s a tyranny of the states. Not exactly a philosophy I can get behind.
I like facism thats why I voted for Bush all four times (including his father) ran. I think that by taking away our civil rights we are set. I don’t need to have freedom of speech, I have FOX news to tell me how to think. I don’t need gun control because if somehow the US Army, Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force aren’t enough me and my concelled weapon are. I don’t need civil liberties because executing retards rids us our retards. I don’t need other religions because if your not a Christian you should be killed anyway. I don’t need socialized healthcare because if I loose my job because I am diagnosed with Cancer too bad so sad for me. Actually fuck all of you because all I need is me!
“it’s not just his asinine policies, inconsistent voting record and archaic 19th century worldview; it’s also the fact that his hordes of internet followers have been collectively creaming their pants over him for the past 5 months now. ”
Sorry, but I stopped reading as soon as I finished that sentence.
“He says he doesn’t trade votes and as a result is rarely pressured.” That is from a bias washington post article(against Ron Paul),and still, it says he never trades votes. He sticks with what he says and NEVER changes. You’ll never be able to prove anyone wrong on this,sorry. Besides that man you just came off really fucking nerdy when you tried making a joke about people creaming their pants over their internet.
Quit being pathetic, douche.