I wouldn’t argue with that, but it’s a far cry from saying “Aid does nothing to raise the standard of living in other nations.”
I am not commenting on your own personal values. But the theory of government that you advocate will, in my view, inevitably lead to outcomes that should shock anyone’s conscience. If you want to deny simple equations like “stop US food aid to developing countries = lots more deaths from famines and natural disasters,” you are free to issue your objections. But I think most people will understand that there would be serious consequences to some people if the United States simply stopped with humanitarian aid.
Not someone else. Me and everyone else. We pay for my local school district even though many people have no kids. We pay for Medicaid benefits for poor sick people who are not me or my kin. We pay for fire departments, ambulances, military forces, and police that many of us have never had the need to call upon. We also pay a little bit to help sick and starving children in distant places. That’s all good stuff. And shoot, I probably pay several times more in taxes than the average American, and me and people like me probably ought to pay a little more. I’m not passing the buck, I’m paying my small share.
Will,
You’re under the impression that Jeffrey Rogers Hummel’s views are viewed as orthodox.:dubious:
Also you haven’t explained why Paul calling gay men “queers” “might” make him a homophobe but him calling a black man a “nigger” would definitely make him a racist.
Why the double standard?
I came across this article about RP:
Where the author, David Groshoff, explains why he himself used the word “queer” when referring to “queer rights”:
01:45 PM on 12/29/2011
Thanks for the inquiry.
“Homosexual” defines someone by a sexual act. The essence of lesbians and gay men are more than a sexual act. “Homosexual” also omits bisexuals. “Sexual Orientation” omits transgender, transexual, pansexual, genderqueer, and a whole variety of non-cisgendered others who currently face discrimination under a variety of laws (many of which Ron Paul has indicated that he’d like to repeal based on his statement about the IRS and Internal Revenue Code). While not trying to deny aspects of individualism and not trying to make all of these people a collective, “queer,” as a term, usefully can encompass how the law impacts these individuals, while ensuring that I stay under my word count.
I recently spoke at a symposium at the University of Maryland on school bullying and resulting suicides (bullycides) of queer kids. A woman approached me during the morning break indicating her dissatisfaction with my use of the term “queer.” By the end of the day, after hearing all of the panelists, from a variety of professions (i.e., not just lawyers, law professors, or other academics, but school administrators, social workers, psychologists, etc.), the woman kindly approached me again just to tell me she now “got” why I used the term.
I hope that you find that response insightful, even if you disagree with my use of the term.
See also Google Scholar
What’s so controversial? Nine out of ten libertarians agree with him! He’s a genuine consensus-builder!
Queer is one of those reclaimed terms. Without getting too academic about it - and I’m not inclined to make a big deal out of the fact that Paul used it after Cohen pranked him - Paul was definitely using the word in a pejorative sense. You can still do that with a word that is being reclaimed. The whole point is that it’s a word that used to be an insult, and people are trying to adopt it in a more positive sense.
Oh, I agree entirely in this case, but I was simply trying to bring light to a context in which it may not be used in a pejorative sense.
The question is: can a non-Paulite reasonably suspect that Ron Paul used the term, on that occasion, in that non-perjorative sense?
I sincerely doubt it.
I just threw that in because it was more effective than me trying fumble my way through an explanation of my position. If you have a reasonable argument for why the quoted position isn’t valid, why are you dodging the content?
I hate to repeat myself but here goes. I said “might” because that information was from a source that could have been wrong. In the “racist” example it was a certainty that he had participates in that behavior. If he participated in the behavior recounted by the source, he is a homophobe.
Another question would be could a Paulite suspect he used it in its perjorative sense and still support him? Probably.
True. One more reason why the Ronulans are not worth listening to.
I understand that. I would rather have a well run charity using my dollars overseas than have ham-fisted bureaucrats channeling money through corrupt foreign-government officials.
I think this is a key attribute though for most of the RP supporters I’ve seen. They all see the government as corrupt, wasteful, full of collusion, etc and therefore think the resources are better used elsewhere.
Or do I have it wrong and you think spending a bunch of money on, say, fighting AIDS isn’t worth it in itself?
If Americans are trying to elect a perfect or even near perfect person to the presidency, they have been failing for 223 years now.
Of course fighting AIDS is worth it in itself. There are many charitable endeavors worth supporting. Government isn’t always the best way to fix a problem.
For examplein the 80s after taxes were lowered "charitable giving rose by more than 25% in inflation adjusted dollars twice the rate of the previous decade. "
First of all, you don’t know much about foreign aid if you think that we write checks to foreign dictators and hope that they go out and cure HIV and hunger. That isn’t how it works.
Secondly, any charity in the world will tell you that they are not capable of dealing with large-scale issues like smallpox, HIV, and famine. They can help in some places, but they just don’t have the resources or management ability to deal with whole countries or continents.
If you stop all foreign aid programs and hope for the pig in the poke that some charity will magically step in and do a good job on all these humanitarian issues, a lot of people will die. It’s just a fact. I can think of no way to rationalize that such a decision, other than that some people are more bothered by the existence of a bureaucracy than they are the existence of misery.
Okay, so charitable giving rose by more than 25% – to what level? And, at that level, is it enough money/resources to make a reasonable dent in the AIDS problem (or any other major disease/virus/etc)?
Can you cite examples of charities making significant impacts on continental-level problems?
And, as I said before, he was caught on film angrily declaring “That man’s a queer!”.
How could the source “have been wrong”?
Are you saying that you think the video footage was faked?
Some context: Ron Paul & Sasha Baron Cohen (Bruno) - YouTube towards the end