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Why Liberals Should Support Ron Paul September 1, 2007
By Karsten Nicholson
This is a response to: Peace, Injustice and Ron Paul by David Swanson.
“If Ron Paul had been president for the past 6 years, a million more Iraqis would be alive, and another 4 million would not be refugees. The world would be a safer place, and Americans would have lost fewer freedoms.” -- David Swanson
This is very true. Many liberals have recognized and praised Ron Paul’s courageous stance on foreign policy and civil liberties. This is a man who is not afraid to go into a Republican debate, with 9 neo-cons, in South Carolina, on Fox News, and stand up to thugs like Rudy Giuliani. In the second Republican debate to which I am referring to, Ron Paul correctly pointed out that our foreign policy is a major contributing factor to the underlying cause of 9/11. “They don’t hate us because we’re rich or we’re free, they hate us because we’ve been over there, we’ve been bombing Iraq for 10 years.” Ron Paul stood his ground, and said that with a non-interventionist foreign policy, we’d be less likely to incite hatred, and therefore more safe and more free.
Nobody could call Ron Paul a neo-con. His record stands on his own. He voted against the Iraq war, and the funding bills for it that have come since the war started. Ron Paul spoke out against a possible war in Iraq years before it started. In 1998, he voted against regime change in Iraq. Ron Paul has also recently voted against a similar condemnation of Iran. Unlike many of the Democratic front-runners, he believes a nuclear first strike should absolutely be taken off the table. He believes that it makes no sense to preemptively attack 3rd world nations with no military, and no threat posed to us. Ron Paul believes that if we are to go to war, it needs to be done constitutionally. Congress, which represents the people, should declare war, and the people should be behind it. We should go to war, fight it, win it, and come home. He is completely against the War Powers Act, which gives the President the authority to go to war when he sees fit. Ron Paul has never voted to increase the power of the executive branch. Ron Paul would never send troops unconstitutionally to invade a 3rd world nation, to enforce U.N. resolutions or pretend that nation poses a national threat to us. Ron Paul wants to bring all US troops home from Iraq immediately, and stop policing the world. He knows that it was not the intent of the founders to police the world. If Ron Paul were in office, we would follow a non-interventionist foreign policy, and the defense budget would be able to be cut significantly.
Ron Paul is also an ardent supporter of civil liberties. He voted against the patriot act. He has sponsored a bill to overturn the patriot act. He is strongly against warrant-less searches, government spying, and strongly opposes torture. He completely supports habeas corpus. He also opposes the death penalty. Also, a little known fact is that if Ron Paul got his way, there would be no federal war on drugs. He has called the war on drugs “as stupid as the war in Iraq”. He is uncompromisingly against federal laws banning medical marijuana, and completely opposed to the federal government coming in, when a state has legalized medical marijuana, and using force to nullify this legalization (such as has happened in California, where medical marijuana is legal, but the federal government uses force to effectively keep it criminalized. This would NOT happen under a Paul administration.)
Fascism is when the corporations and the businesses control a country. Liberals are completely opposed to this, and opposed to too much corporate power. The Federal Reserve is the most powerful and most dangerous corporate power in this country. It is the greatest threat to the poor, working poor, and middle class. The federal reserve is a private bank, which has a monopoly over the money making process in this country. The Federal Reserve is secretive, and nobody really knows who owns it. Congress has absolutely no oversight. When a private, secretive entity controls the nation’s money supply, it controls the nation. The fed also allows the banks to charge very high rates of interest, and makes it very hard to declare bankruptcy and get a fresh start. The federal reserve prints phony paper money, which has no more backing than Monopoly money. The more money it prints, the more inflation it causes. As you increase the money supply, you devalue it. Prices to food, housing, gas, health care, and everything else that is a necessity rises exponentially. Who does this hurt? The poor and middle class. It transfers their wealth to wall street. Wall Street benefits from inflation. The federal reserve was created in 1913, the same year the IRS was created. Is this a coincidence? No. We borrow money from the federal reserve, and pay fees on the borrowed money using income tax money. In the end, it all ends up in the hands of the private bankers. Liberals should be outraged by this. The income tax, and the federal reserve’s “inflation tax” (in all senses it is a tax when the fed prints money to causes inflation) eats up a HUGE amount of money from the average middle class person. It benefits the rich. Even with a progressive income tax, rich people who own real estate, or are in bed with Wall Street, benefit because of the inflation. The inflation tax is more regressive than the income tax could ever be progressive -- and they both go together. The income tax funds the federal reserve fascists, as well as the unconstitutional, empire-building foreign policy we now have. The income tax is itself unconstitutional and illegal. The 16th amendment was never ratified. Nobody has ever found a law requiring the majority of Americans to pay an income tax. Some might say that this sounds evil, but it is a necessary evil, because we need the funds to keep our government going. Otherwise, our roads and freeways would collapse. But, for example, our infrastructure is funded through gas taxes, not the income tax. Most social services are funded by taxes other than the income tax. It is a bait and switch to believe that we need the income tax to fund our social services, when really it goes to fund the fascists that control our government, and our empire building. Ron Paul has never said he would slash or get rid of social services. He would let young people opt out of social security if they wanted to (no social service should be forced on anybody), for instance, but he would not deny services to people who have paid into the system. In fact, Ron Paul has sought to protect the money from the social security find, rather than spending it on the general fund as the federal government often does. Ron Paul would work to get rid of the IRS, Federal Reserve, and our empire building the moment he got into office. He would return the authority to make money back to the government (as mandated by the constitution), and away from the private bankers. Money should be gold and silver, not printed money out of thin air. (Please google "Freedom to Fascism". You will see a free movie, labled "Director's Authorized Version". Please watch this. It discusses these issues in depth.)
Liberals have long recognized the evil of so called “free trade” deals. Ron Paul would end GATT, NAFTA, WTO, CAFTA, and all of these deals which hurt the American workers and American businesses. He is also opposed to our involvement in the UN, which sets him apart from all Democratic candidates. If you think America is becoming a police state now, do you really want to know what it will be like when an even bigger, more powerful entity, the UN, assumes control over our lives? What we have left of the Bill of Rights will not be there to protect us, as the UN grows in power. Also, it must be said that part of the reason for going to war with Iraq was their violation of the UN resolutions. We went to war, illegally, to enforce UN resolutions. If we do not get out of the UN, this could happen again, and again, and again. Ron Paul is not an isolationist. Ron Paul would trade (but not under so-called “free trade” deals), be friends with other nations, and talk with other nations. However, Ron Paul would put the American worker, and the American business, and the American citizen first. He would protect the constitution and the Bill of Rights, and never compromise them, no matter what some foreign entity might want.
Ron Paul is a staunch opponent of a National ID card. Some politicians have pushed a National ID card as the way we’re going to stop illegal immigration. Ron Paul realizes that a National ID card is an absolute infringement on the liberties of American citizens. It also makes absolutely no sense as a method to counter illegal immigration, since only American citizens would be required to have a National ID card. It is true that Ron Paul wants to secure the borders, but he believes that immigrants have become the “scapegoat” of our current economic system. Because of reasons I have already discussed, America is headed into bankruptcy. If we lived within our means, and did not have the runaway inflation caused by the Federal Reserve, and stopped policing the world, we would probably need the workers, and they would be welcome. First correct our economic policies, and then the immigrants will not be the scapegoat.
Ron Paul has called himself “pro-life”, and sometimes uses such rhetoric. He has delivered over 4,000 babies, and he is personally pro-life. However, he believes the federal government should be out of the abortion question. It should be an issue for the states. Ron Paul does not desire to ban all abortion at a federal level, the way some conservatives would like to. Ron Paul would leave the abortion issue up to the states. If the states want abortion to be legal, Ron Paul would not interfere. Ron Paul voted against making it a crime for minors to cross state lines to get an abortion. He also believes the federal government should be out of the marriage issue. Ron Paul voted against the federal marriage amendment. If a state like Massachusetts wanted to legalize gay marriage, Ron Paul would not stop it. That is the state’s right. Ron Paul has said that, ideally, government should be out of the marriage issue altogether, and it should be a private matter.
I hope I have convinced you to support the Ron Paul Revolution. The biggest reason to support Ron Paul, however, is to break up the Republican establishment. I hope I have already convinced you that Ron Paul is as far from neo-con as you can get (farther than most Democrats, even -- half of them running, unlike Ron Paul, voted for the Iraq war, and the front-runners, unlike Ron Paul, would take no options off the table regarding Iran). Wouldn’t it be a blast to see him win the nomination? All of the neo-con pundits would go ape. The imperial, neo-con movement might be fatally wounded. Do you really want to have to sit through months of the general election cycle, with a neo-con hawk like Thompson, Giuliani, or Romney? Do you want to see their ugly faces in the Newspaper every morning, or on TV every night? Let’s destroy the Republican establishment. Even though the mainstream media says that it can’t happen, it can. Ron Paul is currently leading in Straw Polls, which measure real support on the ground. He has over 34,000 active meetup.com members throughout the country, more than any other candidate running for President. Please, be a part of the Ron Paul Revolution. Register Republican now, and vote in the in the Republican primary for Ron Paul, and destroy the neo-con movement. Click here to see if your state has an open or closed primary (if it has a closed primary, please re-register immediately), and if you have to re-register to vote in the Republican primary: http://www.primarilypaul.com/ron-paul-in-the-primaries/.
Meet up with active supporters in your area: http://ronpaul.meetup.com
Become Ron Paul’s myspace friend: http://www.myspace.com/ronpaul2008
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