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.
