He has zero charisma, and zero chance of winning, so not to worry...
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Rick Archer" <rick@...> wrote:
>
> 5 Reasons Progressives Should Treat Ron Paul with Extreme Caution --
> 'Cuddly' Libertarian Has Some Very Dark Politics
>
> He's anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-black, anti-senior-citizen, anti-equality
> and anti-education, and that's just the start.
>
> August 26, 2011 |
>
> Description:
> http://images.alternet.org/images/managed/blogteaser_ronpaulrevolution.jpg_3
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>
> There are few things as maddening in a maddening political season as the
> warm and fuzzy feelings some progressives evince for Rep. Ron Paul of Texas,
> the Republican presidential candidate. "The anti-war Republican," people
> say, as if that's good enough.
>
> But Ron Paul is much, much more than that. He's the anti-Civil-Rights-Act
> Republican. He's an anti-reproductive-rights Republican. He's a
> gay-demonizing Republican. He's an anti-public education Republican and an
> anti-Social Security Republican. He's the John Birch Society's favorite
> congressman. And he's a booster of the Constitution Party, which has a
> Christian Reconstructionist platform. So, if you're a member of the
> anti-woman, anti-gay, anti-black, anti-senior-citizen, anti-equality,
> anti-education, pro-communist-witch-hunt wing of the progressive movement, I
> can see how he'd be your guy.
>
> Paul first drew the attention of progressives with his vocal opposition to
> the invasion of Iraq. Coupled with the Texan's famous call to end the
> Federal Reserve, that somehow rendered him, in the eyes of the
> single-minded, the GOP's very own Dennis Kucinich. Throw in Paul's
> opposition to the drug war and his belief that marriage rights should be
> determined by the states, and Paul seemed suitable enough to an emotionally
> immature segment of the progressive movement, a wing populated by people
> with privilege adequate enough to insulate them from the nasty bits of the
> Paul agenda. (Tough on you blacks! And you, women! And you, queers! And you,
> old people without money.)
>
> Ron Paul's anti-war stance, you see, comes not from a cry for peace, but
> from the deeply held isolationism of the far right. Some may say that, when
> it comes to ending the slaughter of innocents, the ends justify the means.
> But, in the case of Ron Paul, the ends involve trading the rights and
> security of a great many Americans for the promise of non-intervention.
>
> Here's a list -- by no means comprehensive -- of Ron Paul positions and
> associates that should explain, once and for all, why no self-respecting
> progressive could possibly sidle up to Paul.
>
> 1) Ron Paul on Race
>
> Based on his religious adherence to his purportedly libertarian principles,
> Ron Paul opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Unlike his son, Sen. Rand Paul,
> R-Ky., Ron Paul has not even tried to walk back from this position. In fact,
> he wears it proudly. Here's an excerpt
> <http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul188.html> from Ron Paul's 2004 floor
> speech about the Civil Rights Act, in which he explains why he voted against
> a House resolution honoring the 40th anniversary of the law:
>
> The Civil Rights Act of 1964 not only violated the Constitution and reduced
> individual liberty; it also failed to achieve its stated goals of promoting
> racial harmony and a color-blind society. Federal bureaucrats and judges
> cannot read minds to see if actions are motivated by racism. Therefore, the
> only way the federal government could ensure an employer was not violating
> the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was to ensure that the racial composition of a
> business's workforce matched the racial composition of a bureaucrat or
> judge's defined body of potential employees. Thus, bureaucrats began forcing
> employers to hire by racial quota. Racial quotas have not contributed to
> racial harmony or advanced the goal of a color-blind society. Instead, these
> quotas encouraged racial balkanization, and fostered racial strife.
>
> He also said this
> <http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/533817/ron_pauls_libertarian_newsl
> etters_revealed_pg4.html?cat=9> : "[T]he forced integration dictated by the
> Civil Rights Act of 1964 increased racial tensions while diminishing
> individual liberty."
>
> Ron Paul also occasionally appears at events sponsored by the John Birch
> Society, the segregationist right-wing organization that is closely aligned
> with the Christian Reconstructionist wing of the religious right.
>
> In 2008, James Kirchick brought to light in the pages of the New Republic a
> number of newsletters with Paul's name in the title -- Ron Paul's Freedom
> Report, Ron Paul Political Report, The Ron Paul Survival Report, and The Ron
> Paul Investment Letter -- that contained baldly racist material, which Paul
> denied writing.
>
> At NewsOne, Casey Gane-McCalla reported
> <http://newsone.com/nation/casey-gane-mccalla/opinion-ron-paul-is-a-white-su
> premacist/> a number of these vitriolic diatribes, including this, on the
> L.A. riots after the Rodney King verdict: "Order was only restored in L.A.
> when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days
> after rioting began."
>
> In a related piece
> <http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/533817/ron_pauls_libertarian_newsl
> etters_revealed_pg5.html?cat=9> , Jon C. Hopwood of Yahoo!'s Associated
> Content cites a Reuters report
> <http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS233377+08-Jan-2008+BW200801
> 08> on Paul's response to the TNR story, which came in the form of a written
> statement:
>
> The quotations in The New Republic article are not mine and do not represent
> what I believe or have ever believed. I have never uttered such words and
> denounce such small-minded thoughts.... I have publicly taken moral
> responsibility for not paying closer attention to what went out under my
> name.
>
> 2) Ron Paul on Reproductive Rights
>
> The sponsor of a bill to overturn Roe v. Wade, Ron Paul's libertarianism
> does not apply to women, though it does apply to zygotes. His is a
> no-exceptions anti-abortion position, essentially empowering a rapist to
> sire a child with a woman of his choosing. Although Paul attributes his
> stance on abortion to his background as an ob-gyn physician, it should be
> noted that most ob-gyns are pro-choice, and that Paul's draconian position
> tracks exactly with that of his Christian Reconstructionist friends.
>
> While mainstream media, when they're not busy ignoring his presidential
> campaign in favor of the badly trailing former Utah Gov. John Huntsman,
> invariably focus on Paul's economic libertarianism, Sarah Posner, writing
> for the
> <http://www.thenation.com/article/162778/gop-front-runners-hostility-governm
> ent-motivates-fiscal-social-conservatives-iowa> Nation, noted that during
> his appearances leading up to the Iowa straw poll (in which Paul finished
> second only to Rep. Michele Bachmann, Minn., by a 200-vote margin),
> "launched into gruesome descriptions of abortion, a departure from his stump
> speech focused on cutting taxes, shutting down the Federal Reserve, getting
> out of Iraq and Afghanistan and repealing the Patriot Act."
>
> 3) Ron Paul on LGBT People
>
> While it's true that Paul advocates leaving it to the states
> <http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2011/05/05/177394/ron-paul-marriage-gop-debat
> e/> to determine whether same-sex marriages should be legally recognized,
> it's not because he's a friend to LGBT people. Paul's position on same-sex
> marriage stems from his beliefs about the limits of the federal government's
> role vis-a-vis his novel interpretation of the Constitution.
>
> In fact, a newsletter called the Ron Paul Poltiical Report, unearthed by
> Kirchick
> <http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/angry-white-man?id=e2f15397-a3c7-4720-a
> c15-4532a7da84ca> , shows Paul on a rant
> <http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/533817/ron_pauls_libertarian_newsl
> etters_revealed_pg4.html?cat=9> against a range of foes and conspiracies,
> including "the federal-homosexual cover-up on AIDS," to which Paul
> parenthetically adds, "my training as a physician helps me see through this
> one." The passage, which also portends a "coming race war in our big
> cities," complains of the "perverted" and "pagan" annual romp for the rich
> and powerful known as Bohemian Grove, and takes aim at the "demonic" Skull
> and Bones Society at Yale, not to mention the "Israeli lobby," begins with
> the paranoid claim, "I've been told not to talk, but these stooges don't
> scare me."
>
> While Paul denied, in 2001, writing most of the scurrilous material that
> ran, without attribution, in newsletters that bore his name in the title,
> this passage, according to Jon Hopwood
> <http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/533817/ron_pauls_libertarian_newsl
> etters_revealed_pg4.html?cat=9> , bears Paul's byline.
>
> 4) Ron Paul Calls Social Security Unconstitutional, Compares it to Slavery
>
> Earlier this year, in an appearance on "Fox News Sunday," Paul declared both
> Social Security and Medicare to be unconstitutional, essentially saying they
> should be abolished for the great evil that they are -- just like slavery.
> Here's the transcript, via ThinkProgress
> <http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/05/15/166363/paul-ss-medicare-slaver
> y/> :
>
> ["FOX NEWS SUNDAY" HOST CHRIS] WALLACE: You talk a lot about the
> Constitution. You say Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid are all
> unconstitutional.
>
> PAUL: Technically, they are. . There's no authority [in the Constitution].
> Article I, Section 8 doesn't say I can set up an insurance program for
> people. What part of the Constitution are you getting it from? The liberals
> are the ones who use this General Welfare Clause. . That is such an extreme
> liberal viewpoint that has been mistaught in our schools for so long and
> that's what we have to reverse-that very notion that you're presenting.
>
> WALLACE: Congressman, it's not just a liberal view. It was the decision of
> the Supreme Court in 1937 when they said that Social Security was
> constitutional under Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.
>
> PAUL: And the Constitution and the courts said slavery was legal, too, and
> we had to reverse that.
>
> 5) Ron Paul, Christian Reconstructionists and the John Birch Society
>
> The year 2008 was a telling one in the annals of Ron Paul's ideology. For
> starters, it was the year in which he delivered the keynote address
> <http://vimeo.com/19602654> [video] at the 50th anniversary gala of the
> John Birch Society, the famous anti-communist, anti-civil-rights
> organization hatched in the 1950s by North Carolina candy magnate Robert
> Welch, with the help of Fred Koch, founder of what is now Koch Industries,
> and a handful of well-heeled friends. The JBS is also remembered for its
> role in helping to launch the 1964 presidential candidacy of the late Sen.
> Barry Goldwater, R-Ariz., and for later backing the segregationist Alabama
> Gov. George Wallace in his 1968 third-party presidential bid.
>
> The semi-secular ideology of the John Birch Society -- libertarian market
> and fiscal theory laced with flourishes of cultural supremacy -- finds its
> religious counterpart, as Fred Clarkson noted
> <http://www.talk2action.org/story/2007/3/5/172426/4273> , in the theonomy of
> Christian Reconstructionism, the right-wing religious-political school of
> thought founded by Rousas John Rushdoony. The ultimate goal of Christian
> Reconstructionists is to reconstitute the law of the Hebrew Bible -- which
> calls for the execution of adulterers and men who have sex with other men --
> as the law of the land. The Constitution Party constitutes the political
> wing of Reconstructionism, and the CP has found a good friend in Ron Paul.
>
> When Paul launched his second presidential quest in 2008, he won the
> endorsement of Rev. Chuck Baldwin, a Baptist pastor who travels in Christian
> Reconstructionist circles, though he is not precisely a Reconstructionist
> himself (for reasons having to do with his interpretation of how the end
> times will go down). When Paul dropped out of the race, instead of endorsing
> Republican nominee John McCain, or even Libertarian Party nominee Bob Barr,
> Paul endorsed Constitution Party nominee Chuck Baldwin (who promised, in his
> acceptance speech, to uphold the Constitution Party platform, which looks
> curiously similar to the Ron Paul agenda, right down to the no-exceptions
> abortion proscription and ending the Fed).
>
> At his shadow rally that year in Minneapolis, held on the eve of the
> Republican National Convention, Paul invited Constitution Party founder
> Howard Phillips, a Christian Reconstructionist, to address the crowd of
> end-the-Fed-cheering post-pubescents. (In his early congressional career,
> Julie Ingersoll writes in Religion Dispatches
> <http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/guest_bloggers/2679/rand_paul_
> and_the_influence_of_christian_reconstructionism__> , Paul hired as a
> staffer Gary North, a Christian Reconstructionist leader and Rushdoony's
> son-in-law.)
>
> At a "Pastor's Forum" at Baldwin's Baptist church in Pensacola, Florida,
> Paul was asked by a congregant about his lack of support for Israel, which
> many right-wing Christians support because of the role Israel plays in what
> is known as premillennialist end-times theology. "Premillennialist" refers
> to the belief that after Jesus returns, according to conditions on the
> ground in Israel, the righteous will rule. But Christian Reconstructionists
> have a different view, believing the righteous must first rule for 1,000
> years before Jesus will return.
>
> They also believe, according to Clarkson
> <http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v08n1/chrisre1.html> , "that 'the
> Christians' are the 'new chosen people of God,' commanded to do what 'Adam
> in Eden and Israel in Canaan failed to do...create the society that God
> requires.' Further, Jews, once the 'chosen people,' failed to live up to
> God's covenant and therefore are no longer God's chosen. Christians, of the
> correct sort, now are."
>
> Responding to Baldwin's congregant, Paul explained, "I may see it slightly
> differently than others because I think of the Israeli government as
> different than what I read about in the Bible. I mean, the Israeli
> government doesn't happen to be reflecting God's views. Some of them are
> atheist, and their form of government is not what I would support... And
> there are some people who interpret the chosen people as not being so
> narrowly defined as only the Jews -- that maybe there's a broader definition
> of that."
>
> At the John Birch Society 50th anniversary gala, Ron Paul spoke to another
> favorite theme of the Reconstructionists and others in the religious right:
> that of the "remnant" left behind after evil has swept the land. (Gary
> North's publication is called The Remnant Review.) In a dispatch on Paul's
> keynote address, The New American, the publication of the John Birch
> Society, explained, "He claimed that the important role the JBS has played
> was to nurture that remnant and added, 'The remnant holds the truth
> together, both the religious truth and the political truth.'"
>
> Is there a progressive willing to join that fold?
>
> Adele M. Stan is AlterNet's Washington bureau chief. Follow her on Twitter:
> www.twitter.com/addiestan
>
