Are Ron Paul supporters the most annoying nutbags ever?!?!

[Simulcra]

Ron Paul is done anyway. He placed 5th with only 8% in one of the most libertarian states in the country. If he can't win New Hampshire, he doesn't stand a chance in rest of the primaries. Not to mention he's way too fringe for the majority of the American people. This country wants universal health care, stronger public education, an end to global warming, etc. I have yet to see Ron Paul address any of those issues.

I have heard him address all those issues.

Health care - Eliminate the IRS and the income tax so people can afford it on their own. Get government out of health care so it cost less.

Stronger Public Education - See above and also eliminate the Dept. of Ed. so public Education can become stronger.

Global Warming - Free the market by deregulating and allowing competition with oil for alternative energy. Stop protecting corporations with government policy that favors one industry/company/product over another.


More Government is not the answer to any of those problems, it is the cause and the perpetuater.

[Patrick]

In this thread we could easily replace "Ron Paul" with "Lyndon Larouche" and, amazingly, it would all fit just as well.

Holy crap remember Lyndon Larouche? He used to buy ad time on the local TV stations and just rant for an hour straight. I think he was definitely a Nazi wannabe and anti-semite. I was not aware of his commie background though. A little background on him for our younger members:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyndon_LaRouche

[Wally Balljacker]

I have heard him address all those issues.

Health care - Eliminate the IRS and the income tax so people can afford it on their own. Get government out of health care so it cost less.

Hmmm, and what about the millions who can't afford to buy health insurance? Or what about the people that get sick in between jobs? Too bad for them?

Stronger Public Education - See above and also eliminate the Dept. of Ed. so public Education can become stronger.

Um, yeah, right, by eliminating all the governments sources of revenue, I'm sure public education will flourish. I'd like to hear you elaborate on that.

Global Warming - Free the market by deregulating and allowing competition with oil for alternative energy. Stop protecting corporations with government policy that favors one industry/company/product over another.

That is the most ridiculous and asinine thing I've ever heard. Your solution to stopping pollution and reducing green house gases is to deregulate polluting corporations? Here's proof that your assertions are dead wrong:

Between 1973 and 1989, a government team of economists trained at the University of Chicago dismantled or decentralized the Chilean state as far as was humanly possible. Their program included privatizing welfare and social programs, deregulating the market, liberalizing trade, rolling back trade unions, and rewriting its constitution and laws... Chile's economy became more unstable than any other in Latin America... growth during this 16-year period was one of the slowest of any Latin American country. Worse, income inequality grew severe. The majority of workers actually earned less in 1989 than in 1973 (after adjusting for inflation), while the incomes of the rich skyrocketed. In the absence of market regulations, Chile also became one of the most polluted countries in Latin America. And Chile's lack of democracy was only possible by suppressing political opposition and labor unions under a reign of terror and widespread human rights abuses

More Government is not the answer to any of those problems, it is the cause and the perpetuater.

Again, I think that conviction is dead wrong. Here's another example of how deregulation and unfettered free markets end up proving to be a disaster.

Of particular interest to economists is the "New Zealand Experiment", which began in 1984 when Roger Douglas became Minister of Finance and began radically restructuring the country's economy to fit the libertarian model[4]. Over the next 15 years, New Zealand's economy and social capital faced a steady decline: the youth suicide rate grew sharply into one of the highest in the developed world[5]; the proliferation of food banks increased dramatically[6]; marked increases in violent and other crime were observed[7]; the number of New Zealanders estimated to be living in poverty grew by at least 35% between 1989 and 1992[8]; and health care has been especially hard-hit, leading to a significant deterioration in health standards among working and middle class people[9]. In addition, many of the promised economic benefits of the experiment never materialised.

[Vogateer]

I have heard him address all those issues.

Health care - Eliminate the IRS and the income tax so people can afford it on their own. Get government out of health care so it cost less.

Hmmm, and what about the millions who can't afford to buy health insurance? Or what about the people that get sick in between jobs? Too bad for them?

Getting sick between jobs wouldn't be a problem if the government didn't provide so many benefits to business and none to individuals. Employer-based healthcare is ridiculous, and it's largely the fault of government policy. Those people used to be taken care of by doctors, even when they couldn't pay. My dad used to do that often. That was before Medicare and Medicaid and other government agencies made his small town practice unprofitable. Suddenly people didn't feel like they needed to pay anything at all, instead of at least paying what they could as they did before, because they were now entitled to treatment, after all, the government was supposed to take care of it. Of course a small practice can't manage the bureaucracy of these programs, so he ended up treating a ton of people for free until he had to take another job elsewhere, after 30 years of practice. The insurance companies, which usually are health care programs instead of just insurance, have merely inserted another business between doctors and patients, and another mass of people to make profits from the whole thing.

Stronger Public Education - See above and also eliminate the Dept. of Ed. so public Education can become stronger.

Um, yeah, right, by eliminating all the governments sources of revenue, I'm sure public education will flourish. I'd like to hear you elaborate on that.

The primary source of school funds K-12 are property taxes. Funding overall is pretty complicated, but even though the fed gives money to schools, it also hands down burdensome bureaucratic work and more top-down decision making from Washington, D.C. instead of at the local level, not to mention taking away school choice. The argument isn't that all government has to butt out completely, but that the federal government has no place, and no constitutional authority, telling people how to educate their children.

Global Warming - Free the market by deregulating and allowing competition with oil for alternative energy. Stop protecting corporations with government policy that favors one industry/company/product over another.

That is the most ridiculous and asinine thing I've ever heard. Your solution to stopping pollution and reducing green house gases is to deregulate polluting corporations? Here's proof that your assertions are dead wrong:

I couldn't find your wikipedia quotes anywhere. Could you please provide a link. Here's what I found in wikipedia on the Chilean economy:

After a decade of impressive growth rates, Chile began to experience a moderate economic downturn in 1999, brought on by unfavorable global economic conditions related to the Asian financial crisis, which began in 1997. The economy remained sluggish until 2003, when it began to show clear signs of recovery, achieving 4.0% real GDP growth. The Chilean economy finished 2004 with growth of 6.0%. Real GDP growth reached 5.7% in 2005 before falling back to 4.0% growth in 2006. Higher energy prices as well as lagging consumer demand were drags on the economy in 2006. Higher Chilean Government spending and favorable external conditions (including record copper prices for much of 2006) were not enough to offset these drags. For the first time in many years, Chilean economic growth in 2006 was among the weakest in Latin America. GDP is expected to expand by 6% in 2007.

So they had impressive growth rates from around 1990 - 1999. Doesn't sound like only economic policy is to blame. Often times people choose dates carefully and massage statistics to get the numbers they want, so when someone seemingly chooses arbitrary dates, I'm skeptical until I can see what happened after the selected dates, not to mention trying to get the full story. Anyhow, you have to go in great depth to see why economies work and why they don't, since things do become so terribly complicated. For instance, without secure property rights capitalism almost always fails. I encourage you to add links to your quote, which would help a lot.

More Government is not the answer to any of those problems, it is the cause and the perpetuater.

Again, I think that conviction is dead wrong. Here's another example of how deregulation and unfettered free markets end up proving to be a disaster.

I had trouble finding your quote again.

About New Zealand, here's wikipedia again:

Historically New Zealand enjoyed a high standard of living which relied on its strong relationship with the United Kingdom, and the resulting stable market for its commodity exports. New Zealand's economy was also built upon on a narrow range of primary products, such as wool, meat and dairy products. High demand for these products - such as the New Zealand wool boom of 1951 created sustained periods of economic prosperity. However, in 1973 the United Kingdom joined the European Community which effectively ended this particularly close economic relationship between the two countries. During the 1970's other factors such as the oil crises undermined the viability of the New Zealand economy; which for periods before 1973 had achieved levels of living standards exceeding both Australia and Western Europe.[27] But these events led to a protracted and very severe economic crisis, during which living standards in New Zealand fell behind those of Australia and Western Europe, and by 1982 New Zealand was the lowest in per-capita income of all the developed nations surveyed by the World Bank.[28]

Since 1984, successive governments have engaged in major macroeconomic restructuring, transforming New Zealand from a highly protectionist and regulated economy to a liberalised free-trade economy. These changes are commonly known as Rogernomics and Ruthanasia after Finance Ministers Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson. A recession began after the 1987 share market crash and this and the reforms caused unemployment to reach 10% in the early 1990s. However the economy recovered and New Zealand’s unemployment rate is now the second lowest of the twenty-seven OECD nations with comparable data (3.7%).[29]

Estonia is also instituting free market reforms with great success.

I lost the part about pollution during editing, but I remember I couldn't find the quote anywhere, either. I have read that using carbon credits has been effective, and is a great free market idea for the environment. Not the one-size-fits-all, means-justifies-the-ends (note it's backwards for bureaucrats, as you'll find in The Peter Principle) bureaucracy that libertarians want to avoid.

I like discussing these topics and hearing your opinion, Wally, but would appreciate avoidance of the rolling eyes "smilie".

[Wally Balljacker]

Link to Wikipedia article - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_ ... #Economics

[Wally Balljacker]

The primary source of school funds K-12 are property taxes. Funding overall is pretty complicated, but even though the fed gives money to schools, it also hands down burdensome bureaucratic work and more top-down decision making from Washington, D.C. instead of at the local level, not to mention taking away school choice. The argument isn't that all government has to butt out completely, but that the federal government has no place, and no constitutional authority, telling people how to educate their children.

I disagree. All children have a right to a certain standard of education, which is why I have a certain distrust for homeschooling and private education. Outside of public schools, there is really no way of knowing exactly what is being taught to kids, and it's an injustice if some parent who home schools their kid teaches them things that aren't actually science, like, say, Intelligent Design or Intelligent Falling. It's a monumental disservice to that child, and the government ought to set standards.

[Vogateer]

Link to Wikipedia article - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_ ... #Economics

Ah, there we are. Well this is obviously one side of the arguments, since it's a part of the "criticism" section. The quote you list has to do with the transition to a free market economy, which apparently was handled poorly (there wasn't a lot of knowledge about transition at the time), and they had a dictator instead of a democracy at that time, which probably didn't help matters. If you continue past where you stopped your quote:

Most of the economic improvements in Chile happened during the period from 1989 to 1995, after the end of the Pinochet dictatorship that was supported by the Chicago economic team. Growth rates since the return to democracy have doubled over what they were during the dictatorship, including those in the current socialist administration, which has not made any significant changes in the economic policies. [7] Libertarianism's critics argue that the results in Chile and elsewhere show that libertarian economic ideas threaten freedom, democracy, human rights, and economic growth. Critics point out that Milton Friedman supported the government that ended democracy in Chile, and that the return to democracy had more to do with the failure of Pinochet's libertarian economic policies than with their supposed success.

So they experienced economic improvements from 1989 to 1995, after the end of the dictatorship, but with no significant changes to the economic policies.

The New Zealand criticism also ends right before the economy started to improve. They had been very protectionist before, and when the first opened up the markets, the farmers had trouble competing, which is exactly what you expect from protectionist policies, where people don't try to improve because there's no competition to push for improvement. So the arguments seem to be less about the real results of market liberalization, and more about transition periods, and how they might be handled.

I disagree. All children have a right to a certain standard of education, which is why I have a certain distrust for homeschooling and private education. Outside of public schools, there is really no way of knowing exactly what is being taught to kids, and it's an injustice if some parent who home schools their kid teaches them things that aren't actually science, like, say, Intelligent Design or Intelligent Falling. It's a monumental disservice to that child, and the government ought to set standards.

One can't really argue that the government has authority to go into education, even though the Supreme Court has basically disregarded the constitution for so long that it's understandable why people consider that a moot point, even if it's true and might be for the best.

I agree that it's sad to see some kids educated by religious nuts who travel to colleges and rant and rave at the students there, but do you really think the government can stop that? After seeing how DHS operates (and man, I know they have a tough job), I seriously don't think they could possibly do anything about it. People don't respect the law as it is, and can't keep kids in schools when they're in gang-controlled areas, so I don't believe passing another law will help, since it will be just as disregarded as many of the other laws. And that's a very tiny minority. The vast majority of home schooled kids are way ahead of their peers in their studies, why make them suffer because of a few nuts? Having decisions made thousands of miles away (people in Europe sometimes don't understand how huge the U.S. is in land area) rarely yields good results. You simply can't bureaucratize your way to a better educational system. In the meantime, all these different parents and different groups lobby to have the education system put them in a good light. This is how you end up with a silly, watered-down history book that has all the excitement and holes of the OOXML documentation.

So to me such laws and regulations aren't a good alternative, since it's a bit like DRM, it hurts and hinders people trying to do right, while being completely ignored by the people you want the law to apply most.

So in the search for a better alternative, I do believe that education should be handled at the local level, and that schools should be chosen by the parents. Is it perfect? No. I do think it's a better alternative than any other system I've seen, at least in America.

Besides that, I've seen libertarians actually advocate federal funding of education, perhaps for a transition period or permanently, where the government does give money towards education, usually through some voucher program. The current education system doesn't work, and the problems are organizational and systemic, and no amount of money can help get rid of that.

[greggh]

It's pretty Orwellian... yes, it's the Ron Paul Newsletter for over 2 decades, but I don't know whatever gave you the idea that it's actually the Ron Paul Newsletter...

http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/ ... 016595.php

Indeed. Rather than claiming he had never read these newsletters, as Paul absurdly did on CNN last night, Paul claimed that he himself wrote the newsletters. Matt Welch find this in the contemporaneous Dallas Morning News report on the newsletters during Paul's 1996 Congressional campaign (May 22, 1996, emphasis mine):

Dr. Paul denied suggestions that he was a racist and said he was not evoking stereotypes when he wrote the columns. He said they should be read and quoted in their entirety to avoid misrepresentation. [...]

In the interview, he did not deny he made the statement about the swiftness of black men.

"If you try to catch someone that has stolen a purse from you, there is no chance to catch them," Dr. Paul said.

At this point I don't think there's anything critics, or as shown, Ron Paul himself, could say to convince Ron Paul supporters otherwise. Too many of them have drunk his Kool-Aid down to the bottom of the bowl.

[jamathis]

Ron Paul is done anyway. He placed 5th with only 8% in one of the most libertarian states in the country. If he can't win New Hampshire, he doesn't stand a chance in rest of the primaries. Not to mention he's way too fringe for the majority of the American people. This country wants universal health care, stronger public education, an end to global warming, etc. I have yet to see Ron Paul address any of those issues.

I'm not sure where he stands on global warming. But, if I recall correctly, he opposes universal health care because it would mean more taxes to which he is also opposed. More taxes would run contrary to the fact that he wants to abolish the IRS and do away with the federal income tax. On education, he opposes the Department of Education and also wants it to be done away with. He wants to leave education up to the states with no federal government interference.

On the original topic. Not all of his supporters are nutjobs. He has said many times that he doesn't believe the government was involved in 9-11. He simply wants an investigation done to see what could have been done to prevent it, what intelligence we already had, and what can be done to prevent that kind of thing from happening again. The conspiracy nuts just twist the facts.

[Vogateer]

Just because someone disagrees with you doesn't mean they're "drinking Kool-Aide" or fooling themselves. It simply means they disagree with you.

If you look back at my posts, you can see that I admitted that Ron Paul might be a racist, I really can't be sure. I can be sure that the comments in the newsletter smack of racism, and that his association with them is a black-eye for him. But after people, like greggh, had so wrongfully gone after Ron Paul as a 9/11 Truther nut simply because some truther students asked him a question, I had to reserve judgement on it. Looking at the full quote from the article you're talking about:

The first indication I could find of Paul either expressing remorse about the statements or claiming that he did not author them came in an October 2001 Texas Monthly article -- less than eight years ago. Here is the relevant excerpt, which references a Ron Paul newsletter that referred to then-Rep. Barbara Jordan as "Barbara Morondon," and called her the "archetypical half-educated victimologist" whose "race and sex protect her from criticism":

What made the statements in the publication even more puzzling was that, in four terms as a U.S. congressman and one presidential race, Paul had never uttered anything remotely like this.

When I ask him why, he pauses for a moment, then says, "I could never say this in the campaign, but those words weren't really written by me. It wasn't my language at all. Other people help me with my newsletter as I travel around. I think the one on Barbara Jordan was the saddest thing, because Barbara and I served together and actually she was a delightful lady." Paul says that item ended up there because "we wanted to do something on affirmative action, and it ended up in the newsletter and became personalized. I never personalize anything."

His reasons for keeping this a secret are harder to understand: "They were never my words, but I had some moral responsibility for them ... I actually really wanted to try to explain that it doesn't come from me directly, but they [campaign aides] said that's too confusing. 'It appeared in your letter and your name was on that letter and therefore you have to live with it.'" It is a measure of his stubbornness, determination, and ultimately his contrarian nature that, until this surprising volte-face in our interview, he had never shared this secret. It seems, in retrospect, that it would have been far, far easier to have told the truth at the time.

So I'm not the only one who finds the racist comments bizarre. I'm not the only person talking about how "Paul had never uttered anything remotely like this." I still find it confusing, because it is so inconsistent with pretty much everything else I've seen about him. He's never shown any indication before in Congress or anywhere else of this racism. The only place it's ever appeared is in the newsletter, which he claims he took responsibility for the articles because his campaign staff told him he had to, and I knew that much before this article. But if Ron Paul is such a blatant racist, why hasn't it come out before from experiences with other people. You'd think he would have made some off-hand comment to someone, as racists usually do.

Of course, the big issue is that if he's being honest, he's practically incompetent, having so much go out under his name without knowledge, and if he's lying, he's a racist. A lose-lose situation if I ever saw one. Of course, Ted Kennedy got drunk, drove a car off a bridge, and killed the female passenger in his car, but he still manages to get elected.

I certainly don't find it as simple of an "open and shut case" as you do that Ron Paul is personally a racist guy, since these newsletters seem to conflict with everything else I've seen and read, but then again, I haven't been the one behaving as though one should be looking for any reason I can find to hate the guy.

[greggh]

Vogateer, I should have written...

At this point I don't think there's anything critics, or as shown, Ron Paul himself, could say to convince most Ron Paul supporters otherwise. Too many of them have drunk his Kool-Aid down to the bottom of the bowl.

By your willingness to at least consider the possibility that some of these despicable things in his newsletter are things Ron Paul believes, if not actually wrote, I would not group you in with the Kool-Aide drinkers. I did say, "too many of them" not all. That has honestly been my impression.

[Wally Balljacker]

Most of the economic improvements in Chile happened during the period from 1989 to 1995, after the end of the Pinochet dictatorship that was supported by the Chicago economic team. Growth rates since the return to democracy have doubled over what they were during the dictatorship, including those in the current socialist administration, which has not made any significant changes in the economic policies. [7] Libertarianism's critics argue that the results in Chile and elsewhere show that libertarian economic ideas threaten freedom, democracy, human rights, and economic growth. Critics point out that Milton Friedman supported the government that ended democracy in Chile, and that the return to democracy had more to do with the failure of Pinochet's libertarian economic policies than with their supposed success.

So they experienced economic improvements from 1989 to 1995, after the end of the dictatorship, but with no significant changes to the economic policies.

The interesting thing about Chile, is that it's main export and source of income is copper, and the world’s largest copper producer, Codelco, is in Chile, and it just so happens to be state-run. Now, there are also private companies, but Codelco, the nationalized company, provides probably ten times as much revenue to the state as the private ones. So it's really not the free market that is saving Chile, it's this nationalized copper business.

[greggh]

The Conscience of a Ron Paul Supporter - Learning to Love Big Brother

http://revolusion2008.blogspot.com/2008 ... orter.html

I would link to the actual topic at http://www.ronpaulforums.com, but for some funny reason it seems to have gone missing now. But here it is in Google's cache as well. Gota love that Google Cache.

http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:52B ... cd=1&gl=us

[Vogateer]

Reading that forum thread is sad. I can see what you mean by the Kool-Aide drinking.

Of course, I'm pretty sure I understand the thought process. If you have libertarian leanings like I do, hearing Ron Paul state those viewpoints with such clarity and vigor is a breath of fresh air, and seeing that message do well among young people is uplifting, but you can't let your fondness for the ideas blind you and lead you to a willingness to ignore the truth as that guy was doing.

It still doesn't make sense to me (of course when does racism make sense?), since the bulk of Ron Paul's writings, all his time in Congress on the floor, and in meetings with minorities aren't consistent with the racist remarks in the newsletter. It still comes down to a lose-lose situation of either incompetence or racism, but I always look for an explanation that is consistent with all the facts, and in my search for that consistency the newsletters seem like a statistical outlier from the rest of the information I can find on the guy.

In this case, the explanation of having a staffer (he refuses to out the guy) write and manage the newsletter still makes the most sense. Of course if I find other evidence of racism outside of the newsletter, it's a different story. Some have claimed anti-semitism, too, but as far as I can tell he just doesn't like AIPAC.