This thread is just confusing me. The divergence of opinions here is not helping. I can’t tell how much of this thread is crackpottery and how much of it is intelligent.
Can anyone please give good reasons why, say, his foreign policy is good/bad or if his economic views are reasonable?
It’s called proportion. Please, you seem decently intelligent. By your reasoning, all polls are worthless.
Of course, you’re going to continue to grasp at straws finding any way to discredit any fact that supports Paul. I’m actually surprised you were so quick to discredit Scheuer, given your own glaring oversight of the very people you cite to attack Paul, Eric Dondero, his former aid that was fired for performance issues.
Furthermore, this is a guy who is terribly worried about Islamo-fascism. Went to Dondero’s website, and found this with little difficulty:
"My fellow Jews need to buck up,” says Eric Dondero, editor of Libertarian Republican.net, over the phone from Houston. “The big problem right now is Islam and Islamism invading our country. And if they want to continue to move in, we need to fight back. Their culture is coming here.”
Dondero, a former staffer for Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul, has blogged extensively about what he calls “creeping Sharia Law” over the past several years. He says if you want to know what Sharia looks like in the United States, all you have to do is look at Europe, where he claims Muslim Europeans have “invaded” the countryside.
“They’re invading Switzerland and a Swedish island called Malmo, where the Muslims are raping all the European and Swedish women,” he says, recalling that city’s reports of lawlessness between the Jewish, Muslim and Neo-Nazi populations. And he fears that if Sharia Law isn’t banned in all states the way it was banned in his, the U.S. is next."
I guess if you follow that line of thinking you may consider his accounts ‘accurate’.
Go read his website (though that may be exactly what he’s after. Your decision). It’s full of very impressive spew. Be sure to check out the comments and his replies.
Paul is essentially a total isolationist. He believes the U.S. shouldn’t be involved in the United Nations and should pay no foreign aid. It’s not a policy that works on planet Earth, particularly in the 21st century. Things that happen in other countries matter, and it’s stupid to pretend otherwise. And the gold standard is not a reasonable economic idea. Other people can explain this much better than I can, but I’ve read enough to convince me it’s a hopelessly antiquated idea that doesn’t make sense.
What a surprise: another nut with close ties to Ron Paul.
For the sake of rigor, though, in what ways do “events in other countries matter?” What WOULD happen if we were total isolationists?
Manufacturing, trade, currency exchange, investment, immigration, terrorism… is this a serious question?
Yes. I chose my username for a reason. I’m not well-versed in politics, and I’m not ashamed to ask stupid questions. I’d rather correct my misconceptions rather than hold onto ideas that might be totally off.
No surprise there, we’re talking about Ron Paul.
Starting with the military angle, the U.S. has a military presences in scads of countries. I understand the point of view that that’s excessive, but those soldiers are there by mutual agreement between the U.S. government and the governments of those countries. Withdrawing them would have consequences and would piss off more than a few governments.
Paul believes it’s not our job to police the world and to nation build. We can’t afford to hold bases around the world and to topple governments we dislike. We’re bankrupt. It’s stupid to pretend otherwise.
To further add salt to the wound, holding bases in other countries breeds terrorism. The 9/11 commission report confirms that 9/11 is a result of US military presence in Islamic nations. Thus, to attempt to increase the security of our country by holding these bases is crackpot nutty lunacy. How would we feel if China wanted to hold military bases in our nation?
Depends on the country. It never bred any in Japan or Germany. (Well, not much, there were the “Werewolves” in occupied Germany, but they were Nazi holdovers and didn’t last long.)
Again, you take a decent point and take it to a ridiculous extreme. The United States isn’t bankrupt. I would prefer the U.S. confine its overseas activity to supporting democracy rather than propping up unsavory governments (although you don’t always choose your dance partners) and I was even concerned about Obama in this regard. But the country isn’t bankrupt and it’s not in debt because of military bases.
This is an oversimplification.
It’s not only for U.S. security.
As I already noted, these arrangements are covered by treaties. The U.S. didn’t invade 150 countries and station troops there.
What, exactly, is so bad about the gold standard?
I’m not condoning it at all, but I want to understand why it’s a bad idea.
It’s a hyperbole, and quite fitting given our exponentially increasing debt.
I would prefer the US confine its activities to fixing its own glooming issues before putting so much attention on other’s issues.
As are your posts.
But, really goldbuggery is about crackpot politics, not crackpot economics – essentially, mistrust of “they” who control the value of our fiat currency. Gold seems not only more “natural” but seems to be something beyond the control of states. It’s a form of economic populism based on a general distrust of the financial sector based in turn on producerism,aka the “physical fallacy,” the idea that people who make things you can hold in your hands are the only makers of “real” wealth and all others are parasitic on them. This kind of thinking is actually very old in America. British conservative Paul Johnson commented in his A History of the American People:
“OK, so it’s not true. You have to admit it’s a compelling argument!”
Good you got it! That is the art of the hyperbole. 
Also, what is up with this states-deciding-gay-marriage laws thing? Shouldn’t we just legalize it at the federal level?
Thanks for the intelligent responses, Marley/Brian.
Paul has this strange opinion (shocking, I know) that in principle, the Federal government should stay out of marriage, however, he also supports a Federal law that prohibits the recognition of same sex marriage. He also supports a bill that, if passed, would prohibit courts from reviewing the constitutionality of the ban on recognizing same-sex marriage.
He has stated that he believes marriage should be between one man and one woman and that the institution “must be protected” against same sex marriage.
So in contrast to your view that same sex marriage ought to be legalized nationally, Paul is stridently in support of retaining the states’ ability to treat homosexuals differently than heterosexuals.
SHOULD marriage be a state-level concept as opposed to federal?
In principle, it “sounds” like a decent idea because I don’t like the idea of the federal government not recognizing same-sex marriage, but I also don’t like the idea of states not recognizing it, either. It just seems like all that’d happen is heterosexual marriage stays legal but gay marriage remains at the mercy of potential bigots. How would it feel if different states had different laws based on the color of your skin?