This is totally disgusting, Ron Paul's ignorance is
monumental.
In fact, Ron Paul comes across as an idiot. He doesn't know
what the hell he is talking about.
Listen to the whole interview if you want.
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( partial ) Transcript
August 23, 2010
Sanjay Gupta: Those
are the facts, as we can tell. But there are some who
say it simply isn’t for any of us to pass judgment on
who should build a mosque, and where they should build
it, as long as it’s on private property and no laws are
broken. New York Mayor, Mike Bloomberg, he believes that
and, apparently, so does Republican Congressman and
former presidential candidate, Ron Paul. And he joins us now from Clute, Texas. Thanks
for joining us, Congressman.
Ron Paul: Thank you,
good to be with you.
Sanjay Gupta: Now, I
read your article and you say this whole issue is really
an issue of property rights and everything else is
“really about hate and Islamaphobia”. But, you know, I
want to start by asking: is what happened on September
11, 9 years ago, different; the worst terrorist attack
on U.S. soil? Are there certain lines to be drawn even
when it comes to this property rights issue?
Ron Paul: No, you
should draw lines. But I think the lines are being drawn
improperly. Al-Qaida was responsible, several hundred
Al-Qaida existed at that time. And maybe there are still
several hundred more. But that doesn’t mean the whole
Muslim religion should be indicted: that is my
complaint. I mean, McVeigh probably was a Christian and
he bombed the Oklahoma Federal building, but does that
mean that a Christian church can’t be built near there
and Christianity is blamed? No, I don’t like that broad
brush. So yes, the violence was committed by Al-Qaida
and they’re bad people and we should do what we can to
destroy them. But that doesn’t mean that we should
destroy the whole concept of the Muslim religion. And if
they can bring this out, whether the mosque is stopped
or not, the implication here is that Islam caused 9/11,
not a narrow branch of the Al-Qaida. To me, that is
crucial because it deals with our foreign policy, it
deals with … you know, even in that clip earlier on
Madeleine Albright admitted. She said, “Well, if 500,000
people are killed, so be it if that’s what it takes”. So
the Muslims have justification for their worries and
concerns.
Sanjay
Gupta: There is a lot of pain and anguish, I
think, from people who are worried about this Islamic
center being built. Do you see that point of view at
all?
Ron Paul: To worry
about it? Well, I worry about it because I’m afraid it
stirs up hatred and that’s why I worry about it. And I
think they’re off on a tangent. I think the purpose was,
too often, to just blame Islam. But there is another
Mosque in that area, this is not right where the towers
were, this is not too far down the street. But, what
about the strip joints? Are these people who are “holier
than thou” condemning the strip joints nearby because it
defames Ground Zero? So I don’t think that’s any
consistency. I think this goal was to blame Islam for
9/11 and I think that is wrong. I don’t think that was
the cause. Al-Qaida did it.
Sanjay Gupta: And
you talk about the fact that there is a lot of
Islamaphobia. I mean, your son, Rand Paul, who’s running for the U.S. Senate in
Kentucky, is opposed to this facility being built. Is he
Islamaphobic?
Ron Paul: Well, I
don’t know what his position is, but he’s certainly not
islamaphoic.
Ron Paul: Well no, I
don’t put everybody who is a candidate in that same
category that might have a reason. You have to ask him
for his reason. But no, everybody who’s opposing it
doesn’t even understand the foreign policy or why we’re
in Iraq and Afghanistan. They don’t have this
understanding, they don’t want to see the connection. My
goal is to make the connection for people to understand
what’s going on and why Al-Qaida has become so militant
and hateful toward us and why painting Islam with a
broad brush makes our problems worse because we’re not
narrowing down on the real cause and those who
perpetuated 9/11. And if we don’t get to that, we can’t
solve this problem
Sanjay Gupta: Do you
think it should be built?
Ron Paul: I don’t
care whether it’s built or not built. Everybody says
it’s private property and they should be able to do what
they want to do. Once again, the point I’m making is not
to blame Islam for 9/11, you have to blame only
Al-Qaida. That is a completely different story than all
these innuendoes that you’re bringing up, I don’t think
that’s part of the question. You have to narrow it in
because it has to do with our foreign policy and that’s
what I’m dealing with; the foreign policy. The foreign
policy is crucial because that’s why we have perpetual
war. And I think this is all connected, not in a way
that is conspiratorial, but in a way that it is almost
like people slip into this. It’s really easy for people
to get to hating Islam.
To me, that’s equivalent to hating
Christians because Timothy McVeigh was a Christian, and
that I don’t like, nobody should like it, nobody should
like this being painted with a broad brush. It was done
to the Jews before and I don’t like it. I like to stick
to the facts, I like to talk about the foreign policy
and how it’s related.
The sideshow which is what I call
this, is just there to stir things up and prevent us
from dealing with the real problems, and that is our
interventionist foreign policy that gets us too much
involved overseas, too many people die on both side and
we’re totally bankrupt and we have to address that. We
have to get away from: “Are we going to support the
building of the mosque?” and that was sort of the
innuendos when you bring up with the question about my
son. I mean, you’re missing the whole point when you
think that is the crucial question. The crucial question
is our foreign policy. That’s what I want the people to
think about.
