How do you explain the recent stories related by a former Ron Paul staffer which also call into question his view on homosexuals?
During a three day stay at the house of a gay supporter in California, Paul refused to use his host’s bathroom. Paul angrily directed his staffer to find him a bathroom in a nearby fast food restaurant. When the staffer hesitated because of the apparent absurdity of the request, Paul became agitated, perhaps angry, about the matter.
A hardcore Paul supporter who is gay approached Paul after a speech with his hand extended. Paul swatted the hand away, and the staff who were present attribute this to the fact that Paul “chooses not to be around gays on a personal level,” attributing it to “a personal choice.”
What is interesting is that these anecdotes are presented in DEFENSE of Paul not being prejudiced against homosexuals. Link.
The Civil War was nationalism run amock. Nothing more.
So he became a racist when the TSA was founded?
I’m just putting it in context. Not sure how you got “spinning” from my statement.
Maybe he is homophobic. This doesn’t mean he doesn’t tolerate gays. In fact, if you lend credance to the anecdotes provided, it proves that he is not intolerant of gays, and that he is not racist or anti-semitic.
I don’t support this type of behavior. I also don’t think that he is a Christ-like figure. He is a 79 year old human being.
Congratulations, you have demonstrated far more knowledge of WWII than Ron Paul. He told one of his aides repeatedly that the US shouldn’t have gotten involved in WWII because it wasn’t up to the US to “save the Jews.”
It’s in Ravenman’s link.
Thank you for the history lesson and reminding us all of what we learned in 5th Grade. Once again you’ve demonstrated greater knowledge of American history than Ron Paul.
He’s the idiot that attacked Lincoln fighting the Civil War and he’s the one who said the one who said the Government shouldn’t have launched a war to end slavery not me so complain to him.
“Queer” is a homophobic slur. He got extremely upset at a man whom he believed was gay and shouted “That man’s a queer!” and ran out of there as quick as he could.
By your standard, if he got upset with someone whom he thought was black and ran out of the room screaming “that man is a nigger!” that wouldn’t have been a sign of bigotry.
You’re forgetting the newsletters which he published for around fifteen years and until recently claimed he’d written them.
It’s obvious based on the context to every reasonable person that he was referring to the fact that they weren’t white.
I think you’ve tried and lost this argument several times in other threads. Anyway, OP, in the Ron Paul pro or con thread, how do you feel about “supporters often think the Civil War was unconstitutional aggression by the north?”
If his newsletters are to be believed, he was a virulent racist long before that. I am having trouble taking your argument at face value. The statement is bigoted, your objection was that he hasn’t said anything else bigoted about the TSA in 30 years. The TSA didn’t exist until the last decade, so there was no opportunity. And the comment he actually did make was bigoted, so saying “he only said it once” doesn’t work as a defense.
So then if Ron Paul referred to blacks as “niggers”, refused to use the same bathrooms as a black person and refused to shake hands with black people, you’d conced that he “might” be a racist(though you wouldn’t be sure) but you’d insist that he “tolerates” black people and therefore this shouldn’t stop people for voting for him.
What “that has to do with anything” is first off an illustration of Ron Paul’s profound ignorance of history. The “save the Jews” comment makes Ron sound like the bigoted and foolish America First crowd prior to Pearl Harbor. When the British were hard pressed during the Battle of the Atlantic and badly needed U.S. assistance, Pres. Roosevelt found a way to help them (i.e. via Lend-Lease). I’m convinced that had it been Pres. Ron Paul, he would have told the British to go hang, which might have had a major impact on history, and not in a good way.
Ron, remember, is a guy who condemns economic sanctions against Iran as an act of war. His convictions about the virtues of isolationism (or anti-interventionism, if that sounds more palatable to you) have put him way out in an extreme position that actually makes armed conflict more likely.
If you don’t like hawks like Rick Perry (and there’s a lot not to like) it doesn’t mean you have to embrace the other extreme.
Right now, our currency is backed by a weighted average of every single product and service in the world, with the weighting determined by the free market. It’s hard to get much more substantial than that.
Paul has stated that he would abolish the IRS and end federal income taxes along with abolishing half the federal agencies. These are goals that he absolutely cannot accomplish, which means he’s wasting everybody’s time going on about it.
To play devil’s advocate for a moment though, and supposing he were able to somehow convince both houses to go along with this scheme, the impact upon the country would likely be devastating. States rely heavily on government largess in order to do business. Without an influx of federal dollars, the burden of raising money to take care of business would fall entirely on each state. This would like mean the institution of extremely burdensome local/county/state sales and income taxes to make up the shortfall. It would also likely lead to the socializing of state governments in order to cope with increasing costs for schools and social programs, as well as a spike in those in the ‘poor’ category.
Paul’s policy ideals are those of scorched earth. Removing industry oversight and pushing everything back on state governments would lead to a near immediate lowering of air, safety and water standards in order to encourage industry development in individual states, to the detriment of other states. His response to that is a very large shrug. Do you want your state to be the Greece of America, sinking into debt, poverty and near anarchy?
I don’t think the Confederates’ sense of a shared identity separate from the North’s was a “nationalistic” one strictly speaking. No language barrier or anything along the Mason-Dixon Line, etc.
Every candidate has things he’d like to do - the things he’ll actually try to do are a subset of that, and the things he is likely to actually get done are a subset of that. Only the last subset really matters and I believe that subset is the null set where Paul is concerned.
I think you’re referring to something Ravenman posted, not me, but in any case how do you prove that someone who said minorities don’t look American isn’t a racist?
Here’s his tolerance for gays: he finds them viscerally disgusting (although who knows, maybe his attitude has improved since then), has printed a lot of disgusting things about them, and has ignored his own principles to try to prevent courts from hearing challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act, which prevents same-sex marriages from getting full faith and credit in another states. You weren’t able to defend this in another thread, either. If this is Paul’s version of tolerance, it’s inadequate.
I don’t think the Confederates’ sense of a shared identity separate from the North’s was a “nationalistic” one strictly speaking. No language barrier or anything along the Mason-Dixon Line, etc.