“Let rich folks take advantage of poor folks”? Seriously? You have a very poor understanding of libertarianism if you believe that. If Ron Paul was president, he would have fully audited the Federal Reserve system, found out all the fraud involved and prosecuted the perpetrators to the full extent of the law. He would have allowed all companies to go bankrupt. He would have cut all Agricultural subsidies and other forms of corporate welfare.
After all that, how exactly would these “rich folks” be able to take advantage of anyone? They wouldn’t. They would have to work hard, produce things of real value that people wanted to buy. If they didn’t they would fail. Period, end of story.
Ron Paul, and Rand Paul’s position is for pot to be legalized and get the government out of the marriage issue entirely. So, you clearly haven’t done your homework.
Do you have a problem with reading comprehension? I didn’t say “every household”. I said “responsible” household. No, I don’t think people that get way over their heads in debt are being responsible. But governmental policy encourages people to get in debt. We are all on the hook for the national debt anyway. We are overtaxed and struggling to make ends meet. No wonder people end up relying on the credit card.
I’m in favor of Rand Paul because he is Ron Paul’s son and the best candidate for the Senate running this year. Clearly he has intellectual honesty if he tackled the issue of Civil Rights with regards to property rights in a consistent manner.
He is trying to play nice with the Republican establishment while staying true to his libertarian principles. He is also unaccustomed to the pressure of the national spotlight. I am giving him a pass on some issues that I disagree with. Playing politics is necessary sometimes.
This is completely fair and valid as I have posted a few times. The tone was mostly a reaction to enduring nearly a week of smears directed at Rand Paul and my experience with some posters who carelessly throw around the term “nutjob” and “wacko” to describe something that, to my mind and judgement from study, makes so much sense. Its not personal.
You make a fair point. People certainly can’t be perfected. The issue is, and I think you will agree with this:
People have faults and many are immoral. Government is simply a reflection of the people. Our elected representatives are just people like us, except they have massive amounts of power to do harm.
It was once said, "Power tends to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts absolutely."
If we the people can’t peacefully resolves our problems, thinking that the government, made up of people just like us (but with more power) is going to do them better is foolhardy.
What? I’m not saying all the media is left wing, I am talking about those in the media that want Rand Paul’s opponent to win. MSNBC, ABC News and those that are distinctively left wing. There are the right wing versions, Fox News and some others.
You want to think that there aren’t left wing versions of Fox News out there? How do you explain the continual smearing that MSNBC has done against Rand Paul?
I’m talking about now. You think if the public accomidation clause was removed from the Civil Rights legislation businesses would become re segregated overnight? Come on. It would never happen and certainly not in any case were their weren’t non bigoted alternatives.
My guess is that he’s trying to figure out if it’s gonna be at all possible to say what he really thinks (“no”) without sounding like the narrow idealogue he knows he’ll sound like, because he knows that will be the end of much participation in this and prolly many future threads he starts.
He’s a flake, that’s why. There’s no need to “smear” him. MSNBC isn’t the “left wing media”; there IS no left wing equivalent of Fox in America.
Garbage. America is a deeply bigoted nation. Remove the rules against them and whites-only establishments would spring up like mushrooms. Entire towns would go white-only just like the old days.
And it exemplifies one of the key errors of libertarianism; the baseless conviction that non-governmental groups and powerful individuals aren’t just as prone to corruption and abuse than the government, with fewer means of reigning them in.
And certainly no business would be stupid enough to leave black Secret Service agentssitting around for nearly an hour while their white co-workers were served within 15 minutes.
The truth is, Civil Rights legislation is on the books because systematic discrimination of minorities could no longer be hand-waved away.
Fatal ennui will surely overcome me if I have to read back through six pages of the OP’s endless fawning over the Pauls to find previously posted cites demonstrating that the above is incorrect. I am sure I remember reading that Ron and/or Rand or both have spoken positions exactly opposite of the above.
If someone can direct me to those posts I’ll be grateful-- and be able to cheer, point, and laugh.
If I’m mistaken, I’ll have my crow grilled, with mustard on the side.
Rand Paul says federal laws on marijuana shouldn’t be lifted. It’s on his web site and I’ve linked to it a couple of times. I forget if it was upthread or in another thread that another poster said he is opposed to gay marriage. He also supports laws and a Constitutional amendment banning abortion. So other than being a 100 percent run of the mill Republican on those issues, he’s totally a freethinking libertarian.
I supposed it doesn’t technically qualify as something either “said,” but Palin (so far) has been smart enough not to issue newsletters under her name with racist tripe in them.
Regarding Ron Paul and pot, it looks like he’s very specifically against Federal regulation, but is mute on state regulation, i.e. Oregon could make it 100% legal, Texas could make use a capital crime, etc.
Strikes me as kind of odd - I’d’a thought a libertarian would object to governmental regulation regardless of the source, but then again, I’ve never run for elected office in the U.S. and I understand “states’ rights” strikes a cord with a lot of its citizens.
Thanks for that; it’s exactly what I remember. Good thing! I really don’t like crow.
So this is my opportunity to say, hey, jrodefeld, your boy(s) aren’t such free thinkers after all. Or they are (as I also believe I read upthread) totally full of shit and willing to lie like rugs about their “convictions” to sway the electorate.
And your own beliefs about them, their veracity, and the principals you tell us they forthrightly, even righteously stand for (“Ron Paul, and Rand Paul’s position is for pot to be legalized and get the government out of the marriage issue entirely. So, you clearly haven’t done your homework.” quoth you) are (shall we say most charitably) misplaced. By a few orders of magnitude.
Who hasn’t done their homework now? Off to bed, without supper! (Unless you’d like a heaping serving of crow. Without condiments.)
It looks like jrodefeld thinks they’re wrong on those issues, but he’s cool with them flip-flopping or or lying about their views to get elected. Because these guys aren’t typical politicians, you see.
I don’t know whether **jrodefeld **thinks they’re right when they’re *fur *these or *agin *them. Either way, it doesn’t seem to matter. They’re not liars, they’re not flip-flopping. They are simply offering nuanced positions.
Like the nuanced position that they deplore racial discrimination but would cheerfully allow businesses to practice it, because that somehow makes both the discriminator and the discriminatee more “free”. Gosh oh golly, isn’t it great how they *luv *America?