9 ms·

What makes me sad is that a lot of people, even here, discharge Ron Paul as some sort of crazy guy without even listening to what he says. In comments to this p

by snitko 14y ago

What makes me sad is that a lot of people, even here, discharge Ron Paul as some sort of crazy guy without even listening to what he says. In comments to this post "thesagan" wrote that some of his ideas are "batshit crazy" as if his ideology is composed of many different unrelated parts. Not true, Ron Paul ideas are ideas of libertarianism and if you study them diligent enough, you'll eventually be used to thinking in this framework. Which is actually the point: it is a framework which has logical structure to it. Unlike both parties' ideologies, which are, indeed, crafted out of many different unrelated parts serving special interests.

astrodust 14y ago
The problem is Ron Paul is a crazy guy. He's trying to rigorously apply principles from the 1700s to today's world. He's not willing to compromise in the face of evidence that contradicts his firmly held opinions. I've studied Libertarianism to the point of finding out that, not unlike other extremist philosophies, it's too far-fetched to ever work. People are too "human" for Libertarianism to ever work. It's too easily corrupted to serve the interests of those with power. Ron Paul either lives in some kind of puppies and rainbows small-town world where corporate interests never trump personal liberties, where money doesn't equate to power and relative immunity from prosecution, or he's willing to overlook all that and hold out faith that Libertarianism will somehow change how people iteract. Basically he's the Richard M. Stallman of politicians. Blinded by ideology and ultimately dragging things in the wrong direction.
- snitko 14y ago
  I challenge you to give me one very specific example of how something is not going to work in a libertarian world and I'm going right here right now to prove you how it actually would work. (because, with all due respect, I think writing comments that basically say "it's not gonna work because it's puppies and rainbows" is not helping us find out the truth).
  - mbetter 14y ago
    Ugh, I hate haggis.
  - mindslight 14y ago
    Personal stewardship of nuclear weapons. Please don't "prove to me how it actually would work". Just think about it a while for yourself, and learn to accept that there's limits to the philosophy. Libertarianism is ultimately a heuristic, and you do it no favors by handwavingly claiming that you can prove desirable large scale behaviors based on a small set of axioms. Signed - a libertarian.
    - saraid216 14y ago
      This has been what bugs me about gun rights people. The argument about personal safety is fine, but the people who want everyone to be armed in case the government decided to show its true colors or something? Um. You don't want a firearm. You want a tank.
      - smacktoward 14y ago
        I dunno, there's some folks in Afghanistan and Iraq who did pretty good for themselves against our high-tech arsenal with just some old automatic rifles and homemade explosives. Vietnam, too.
        a_bonobo 14y ago
        All of the insurgents in these conflicts have been armed by third parties. The Vietcong got weapons and supplies from China and Cambodia, the Afghani insurgents got weapons and supplies from the US to fight the Soviets (including explosives [1]), and the current Iraqi insurgents get money and supplies from extremists all over the place, mostly from the Emirates (afaik). All of these fighters did not build their own weapons and skills out of nothing. [1] "Other CIA specialists and military officers supplied secure communications gear and trained Pakistani instructors on how to use it. Experts on psychological warfare brought propaganda and books. Demolitions experts gave instructions on the explosives needed to destroy key targets such as bridges, tunnels and fuel depots. They also supplied chemical and electronic timing devices and remote control switches for delayed bombs and rockets that could be shot without a mujaheddin rebel present at the firing site. " http://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/pol/wtc/oblnus091401.html http://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/pol/wtc/oblnus091401.html
- jpadkins2011 14y ago
  > where corporate interests never trump personal liberties Corporations are a construct of government. So yes, if we limit the power of government, corporate power will be limited too.
  - camus 14y ago
    ? explain your point. you are saying than in a full libertarian society there would not be any corporation? i say there would not be any USA, nor society.
    - snitko 14y ago
      I guess what he meant is that in a libertarian society corporations would not be able to lobby the government for special (monopoly) rights and privileges - because there would be no government to lobby. Corporations would have to rely solely on consumers to generate profits by providing services consumers want. And if they fail to do so, they'd go out of business and no one's gonna bail them out.
- geoka9 14y ago
  OK, I'll grant you that, barring the last paragraph which is flame-baity and I'm not about to take the bait. Suppose Ron Paul is not willing to compromise on his libertarian principles. Wouldn't he still make a good president considering that there are "checks and balances" and he wouldn't have dictatorial power? I mean there are so many politicians of various denominations out there and none of them that are of any significant power are libertarians - all of them are essentially "compromisers". Having a diehard libertarian of influence in such an environment can't be bad for the country. Somebody to look after the liberties. To raise hell every time some commercial interests try to impinge on yet another one, you know.
- relampago 14y ago
  We have a lobby system in place. Why would the world be any other place than upside down? You've got a tobacco vote in the House and John Boehner is handing out checks from the tobacco lobby. Really?
mbetter 14y ago
A logical framework is worth exactly as much as the underlying assumptions. In Ron Paul's case, the soundness of those assumptions ranges from "obviously true" to "questionable" to "provably false" to "batshit crazy".
timr 14y ago
"Ron Paul ideas are ideas of libertarianism and if you study them diligent enough, you'll eventually be used to thinking in this framework" I'm trying not to violate rule #1 of the internet ("never argue with an internet libertarian"), but you're making a classic Nerd Error: if you have to say the words "you'll eventually be used to thinking in this framework", you've already lost the war. Politics are not about logically consistent philosophical frameworks, and even if they were, there's certainly no inherent reason that "liberty" has to be your guiding value for establishing such a framework (you could just as easily chose "safety" or "health" or, for that matter, "happiness"). There are a number of practical situations where people will happily, sanely support reductions in liberty to gain other benefits. People who do not recognize this reality are doomed to marginalization.
- snitko 14y ago
  I recognize very well that politics is not about logic. This is why I'm very pessimistic about prospects of libertarianism and especially anarcho-capitalism. Because especially the latter has nothing to do with politics at all. Generally, I think the idea that the majority of people can vote for something and restrict freedoms of other people who opposed the idea is something completely crazy and it's so sad that a lot of people will, I'm sure, continue thinking that is the way to go. Update: also, let me ask you, cos I'm not sure, why do you think it's a bad idea to argue with a libertarian?
  - mbetter 14y ago
    > why do you think it's a bad idea to argue with a libertarian? Every time I argue with a libertarian, it's an endless series of "No True Scotsman" arguments.
    - baddox 14y ago
      That's odd. Can you give me an example of a common libertarian No True Scotsman argument?
      - 14y ago
ericHosick 14y ago
Most people seem to have good intentions but good intentions don't always lead to good results. The intentions of laws with compulsory fees (taxation) and compulsory who marries who are based on good intentions (in the minds of those who create them). In both cases, these good intentions are based on theft of basic rights. But, in the long term, how can you make society better off when your core beliefs are based on theft? ("Unlike both parties' ideologies, which are, indeed, crafted out of many different unrelated parts serving special interests.") The "batshit crazy" ideals of libertarians is to base your good intentions on non-aggression: not theft.
- snitko 14y ago
  Good thing someone brought the non-aggression principle up. Personally, I don't believe in it. I mean, I think eventually the society becomes smart enough to understand aggression in any circumstances is both costly and immoral. However, I also recognize that it's a long way to go there. I think before we get there, we'd have to rely on some sort of protection and the monopoly which government has to provide it cannot be a good solution. It is inconceivable how people hate monopolies when it comes to things like smartphones, airlines or even shoes, but when it comes to their own protection the monopoly is taken for granted.
  - ericHosick 14y ago
    Non-aggression is not no-aggression. To summarize, using my understanding, is that it is unlawful to "aggress" someone until they "aggress" you. Many cultures are based on this concept. NAP allows for "retaliatory violence" (had aggression but as pointed out below is not the correct usage of the word aggression). One of the difficulties, as you point out, comes when people don't realize that they are aggressing others. An example being when they attempt to limit who can get married to who (whom?). Again, there are good intentions behind such aggression (limit the right to use marijuana to protect children) but the results of aggression seem to always lead to more aggression (creation of an illegal drug black market leading to instability in Mexico).
    - 14y ago
fredBuddemeyer 14y ago
if a politician can be described in such terms at the end of a career (in no less a house of "compromise" than the us congress) his accomplishments are not over.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
rayiner 14y ago
Libertarianism is just as much a patch-work of different beliefs as any of the party ideologies. There is a huge internal inconsistency, for example, between it's reliance on economic theories with its embrace of "natural rights" approaches to freedom of action. Libertarians deeply want to believe that we live in a world where you can leave people free to transact freely in a free market, and that will maximize total value. And economic theory tells us that isn't true. Once that ideological purity is lost to brutal reality, libertarians are stuck fighting in the mud like the rest of us: arguing over which particular bits of government intervention maximize value without much in the way of theoretical projections or empirical proof.
- philwelch 14y ago
  > Libertarians deeply want to believe that we live in a world where you can leave people free to transact freely in a free market, and that will maximize total value. And economic theory tells us that isn't true. Libertarianism isn't about maximizing total value; not if you're intellectually consistent about it. Most libertarians see libertarianism as a moral imperative and respond to arguments about "maximizing total value" with "the ends don't justify the means".
  - rayiner 14y ago
    There is a self-consistent version of libertarianism based on a moral belief in freedom tempered by property rights (which is of course a totally arbitrary premise). I disagree, however, that most libertarians feel that way, largely because of the huge emphasis on free markets. I think most are just utilitarians who are mistaken.
    - philwelch 14y ago
      Lots of libertarians aren't intellectually consistent; I was just talking about the intellectually consistent ones who actually have a "libertarian framework" to apply rather than simply a generalized skepticism about government ;) I think we agree.
philwelch 14y ago
And after that, if you keep thinking critically about it instead of taking comfort in having a seemingly logically coherent ideology, you start realizing that the entire framework of libertarianism is batshit crazy and your initial intuitions were not actually that far off. This leads to a healthy distrust of ideologies in general, which is only a win.
Steko 14y ago
"discharge Ron Paul as some sort of crazy guy without even listening to what he says" Or they read enough of what he has said and found it abhorrent. "composed of many different unrelated parts. Not true, Ron Paul ideas are ideas of libertarianism" Libertarianism and the coming race war.
jacobsimeon 14y ago
This comment is well intentioned but fails to compel any non-libertarian to consider Paul's opinion. It is true that Paul is unfairly (perhaps unjustly) portrayed by the media as, to put it plainly, crazy but whining about how unfair it is won't help matters. Ron Paul's message places personal, financial and social liberty at esteem and condemns government encroachment on these liberties. His career as a congressman is consistent with his message which is saying more than can be said of any other politician. For these reasons, the man deserves to be heard and he deserves your respect. The least anyone could do is read the actual transcript of the address--techcrunch doesn't do it justice. http://m.washingtonexaminer.com/transcript-ron-pauls-farewell-address-to-congress/article/2513544#.UKcsTZG9KK3 http://m.washingtonexaminer.com/transcript-ron-pauls-farewel...
danmaz74 14y ago
George E.P. Box's law: "All models are wrong, but some are useful". The problem with libertarianism/anarcho-capitalism, marxism/communism, etc. is that they don't acknowledge that truth and want to extend their models of human behavior well beyond the scope of their usefulness, as if human societies were simple, linear phenomena.
MaysonL 14y ago
And even more people disparage him as a nutcase after listening to him.
tzs 14y ago
Let's listen to some things Paul says and does: • Has no clue how the banking system works. Even the Cato Institute called him "incoherent". http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/dec/09/ron-paul/did-fed-create-15-trillion-during-bailout-and-send/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/dec/... • To lower the cost of health care he says we need to increase competition by increasing the availability of quack medicine (specifically homeopathic medicine) over science-based medicine. http://www.ronpaul.com/2009-09-24/ron-paul-we-need-true-competition-in-medical-care/ http://www.ronpaul.com/2009-09-24/ron-paul-we-need-true-comp... • Has repeatedly introduced legislation to reduce the scope of the First Amendment's establishment clause so that it would not apply to state and local government, and to remove Federal recognition of a right to privacy. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:H.R.539 http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:H.R.539: • His budget plan proposed immediate massive cuts in research in science and medicine, and didn't have anything allocated for the National Science Foundation or NASA. Also immediately eliminated programs for the poor (specifically the woman, infant, and children supplemental nutrition program and the low income home energy assistance program). (No cite, because his site appears to have taken down the page that had the budget plan). • Voted to block the USDA from even considering the possibility that there might be climate change and trying to figure out what impact that could have on the US food supply and the mission of the USDA. http://tinyurl.com/albm229 http://tinyurl.com/albm229 Here is what Paul wanted to stop: http://www.ocio.usda.gov/directives/doc/DR1070-001.pdf http://www.ocio.usda.gov/directives/doc/DR1070-001.pdf Sounds like a crazy guy to me.
- snitko 14y ago
  So, he's crazy because he doesn't want to regulate things. You believe homeopathy is bullshit - fine, I agree with you. We can campaign against it and inform people it's bullshit. But you and I have no rights to tell people what to believe and how to spend their money. I would like to specifically talk about climate change, though. I don't want to question the legitimacy of the claims that it's happening - to the best of my knowledge it is. However, people somehow assume it's definitely a bad thing, which is simply not true. Climate may indeed change in one place and make life of people more difficult, while it may also change in another place and make life more prosperous there. No scientists I know of can predict what effects exactly and on which places climate change is going to have. It seems to me, people who are afraid of climate change simply want to preserve the status quo. Not a bad thing - everybody wants to protect their life and assets. But we must recognize it for that - an attempt to preserve the status quo, not save the planet for the greater good. Back to Ron Paul: he may not be the guy I can agree 100% of the time on everything, but then you can never do that with anyone. Before trying to assess why he voted for this or that, one should understand the reasons why he did so. For instance, he voted against net neutrality, but not because he believed internet shouldn't be free - he believed the government itself cannot make it free, but competition can.

by snitko 14y ago

astrodust 14y ago

The problem is Ron Paul is a crazy guy. He's trying to rigorously apply principles from the 1700s to today's world. He's not willing to compromise in the face of evidence that contradicts his firmly held opinions. I've studied Libertarianism to the point of finding out that, not unlike other extremist philosophies, it's too far-fetched to ever work. People are too "human" for Libertarianism to ever work. It's too easily corrupted to serve the interests of those with power. Ron Paul either lives in some kind of puppies and rainbows small-town world where corporate interests never trump personal liberties, where money doesn't equate to power and relative immunity from prosecution, or he's willing to overlook all that and hold out faith that Libertarianism will somehow change how people iteract. Basically he's the Richard M. Stallman of politicians. Blinded by ideology and ultimately dragging things in the wrong direction.

snitko 14y ago
I challenge you to give me one very specific example of how something is not going to work in a libertarian world and I'm going right here right now to prove you how it actually would work. (because, with all due respect, I think writing comments that basically say "it's not gonna work because it's puppies and rainbows" is not helping us find out the truth).
- mbetter 14y ago
  Ugh, I hate haggis.
- mindslight 14y ago
  Personal stewardship of nuclear weapons. Please don't "prove to me how it actually would work". Just think about it a while for yourself, and learn to accept that there's limits to the philosophy. Libertarianism is ultimately a heuristic, and you do it no favors by handwavingly claiming that you can prove desirable large scale behaviors based on a small set of axioms. Signed - a libertarian.
  - saraid216 14y ago
    This has been what bugs me about gun rights people. The argument about personal safety is fine, but the people who want everyone to be armed in case the government decided to show its true colors or something? Um. You don't want a firearm. You want a tank.
    - smacktoward 14y ago
      I dunno, there's some folks in Afghanistan and Iraq who did pretty good for themselves against our high-tech arsenal with just some old automatic rifles and homemade explosives. Vietnam, too.
      - a_bonobo 14y ago
        All of the insurgents in these conflicts have been armed by third parties. The Vietcong got weapons and supplies from China and Cambodia, the Afghani insurgents got weapons and supplies from the US to fight the Soviets (including explosives [1]), and the current Iraqi insurgents get money and supplies from extremists all over the place, mostly from the Emirates (afaik). All of these fighters did not build their own weapons and skills out of nothing. [1] "Other CIA specialists and military officers supplied secure communications gear and trained Pakistani instructors on how to use it. Experts on psychological warfare brought propaganda and books. Demolitions experts gave instructions on the explosives needed to destroy key targets such as bridges, tunnels and fuel depots. They also supplied chemical and electronic timing devices and remote control switches for delayed bombs and rockets that could be shot without a mujaheddin rebel present at the firing site. " http://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/pol/wtc/oblnus091401.html http://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/pol/wtc/oblnus091401.html
jpadkins2011 14y ago
> where corporate interests never trump personal liberties Corporations are a construct of government. So yes, if we limit the power of government, corporate power will be limited too.
- camus 14y ago
  ? explain your point. you are saying than in a full libertarian society there would not be any corporation? i say there would not be any USA, nor society.
  - snitko 14y ago
    I guess what he meant is that in a libertarian society corporations would not be able to lobby the government for special (monopoly) rights and privileges - because there would be no government to lobby. Corporations would have to rely solely on consumers to generate profits by providing services consumers want. And if they fail to do so, they'd go out of business and no one's gonna bail them out.
geoka9 14y ago
OK, I'll grant you that, barring the last paragraph which is flame-baity and I'm not about to take the bait. Suppose Ron Paul is not willing to compromise on his libertarian principles. Wouldn't he still make a good president considering that there are "checks and balances" and he wouldn't have dictatorial power? I mean there are so many politicians of various denominations out there and none of them that are of any significant power are libertarians - all of them are essentially "compromisers". Having a diehard libertarian of influence in such an environment can't be bad for the country. Somebody to look after the liberties. To raise hell every time some commercial interests try to impinge on yet another one, you know.
relampago 14y ago
We have a lobby system in place. Why would the world be any other place than upside down? You've got a tobacco vote in the House and John Boehner is handing out checks from the tobacco lobby. Really?

mbetter 14y ago

A logical framework is worth exactly as much as the underlying assumptions. In Ron Paul's case, the soundness of those assumptions ranges from "obviously true" to "questionable" to "provably false" to "batshit crazy".

timr 14y ago

"Ron Paul ideas are ideas of libertarianism and if you study them diligent enough, you'll eventually be used to thinking in this framework" I'm trying not to violate rule #1 of the internet ("never argue with an internet libertarian"), but you're making a classic Nerd Error: if you have to say the words "you'll eventually be used to thinking in this framework", you've already lost the war. Politics are not about logically consistent philosophical frameworks, and even if they were, there's certainly no inherent reason that "liberty" has to be your guiding value for establishing such a framework (you could just as easily chose "safety" or "health" or, for that matter, "happiness"). There are a number of practical situations where people will happily, sanely support reductions in liberty to gain other benefits. People who do not recognize this reality are doomed to marginalization.

snitko 14y ago
I recognize very well that politics is not about logic. This is why I'm very pessimistic about prospects of libertarianism and especially anarcho-capitalism. Because especially the latter has nothing to do with politics at all. Generally, I think the idea that the majority of people can vote for something and restrict freedoms of other people who opposed the idea is something completely crazy and it's so sad that a lot of people will, I'm sure, continue thinking that is the way to go. Update: also, let me ask you, cos I'm not sure, why do you think it's a bad idea to argue with a libertarian?
- mbetter 14y ago
  > why do you think it's a bad idea to argue with a libertarian? Every time I argue with a libertarian, it's an endless series of "No True Scotsman" arguments.
  - baddox 14y ago
    That's odd. Can you give me an example of a common libertarian No True Scotsman argument?
    - 14y ago

ericHosick 14y ago

Most people seem to have good intentions but good intentions don't always lead to good results. The intentions of laws with compulsory fees (taxation) and compulsory who marries who are based on good intentions (in the minds of those who create them). In both cases, these good intentions are based on theft of basic rights. But, in the long term, how can you make society better off when your core beliefs are based on theft? ("Unlike both parties' ideologies, which are, indeed, crafted out of many different unrelated parts serving special interests.") The "batshit crazy" ideals of libertarians is to base your good intentions on non-aggression: not theft.

snitko 14y ago
Good thing someone brought the non-aggression principle up. Personally, I don't believe in it. I mean, I think eventually the society becomes smart enough to understand aggression in any circumstances is both costly and immoral. However, I also recognize that it's a long way to go there. I think before we get there, we'd have to rely on some sort of protection and the monopoly which government has to provide it cannot be a good solution. It is inconceivable how people hate monopolies when it comes to things like smartphones, airlines or even shoes, but when it comes to their own protection the monopoly is taken for granted.
- ericHosick 14y ago
  Non-aggression is not no-aggression. To summarize, using my understanding, is that it is unlawful to "aggress" someone until they "aggress" you. Many cultures are based on this concept. NAP allows for "retaliatory violence" (had aggression but as pointed out below is not the correct usage of the word aggression). One of the difficulties, as you point out, comes when people don't realize that they are aggressing others. An example being when they attempt to limit who can get married to who (whom?). Again, there are good intentions behind such aggression (limit the right to use marijuana to protect children) but the results of aggression seem to always lead to more aggression (creation of an illegal drug black market leading to instability in Mexico).
  - 14y ago

fredBuddemeyer 14y ago

if a politician can be described in such terms at the end of a career (in no less a house of "compromise" than the us congress) his accomplishments are not over.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

rayiner 14y ago

Libertarianism is just as much a patch-work of different beliefs as any of the party ideologies. There is a huge internal inconsistency, for example, between it's reliance on economic theories with its embrace of "natural rights" approaches to freedom of action. Libertarians deeply want to believe that we live in a world where you can leave people free to transact freely in a free market, and that will maximize total value. And economic theory tells us that isn't true. Once that ideological purity is lost to brutal reality, libertarians are stuck fighting in the mud like the rest of us: arguing over which particular bits of government intervention maximize value without much in the way of theoretical projections or empirical proof.

philwelch 14y ago
> Libertarians deeply want to believe that we live in a world where you can leave people free to transact freely in a free market, and that will maximize total value. And economic theory tells us that isn't true. Libertarianism isn't about maximizing total value; not if you're intellectually consistent about it. Most libertarians see libertarianism as a moral imperative and respond to arguments about "maximizing total value" with "the ends don't justify the means".
- rayiner 14y ago
  There is a self-consistent version of libertarianism based on a moral belief in freedom tempered by property rights (which is of course a totally arbitrary premise). I disagree, however, that most libertarians feel that way, largely because of the huge emphasis on free markets. I think most are just utilitarians who are mistaken.
  - philwelch 14y ago
    Lots of libertarians aren't intellectually consistent; I was just talking about the intellectually consistent ones who actually have a "libertarian framework" to apply rather than simply a generalized skepticism about government ;) I think we agree.

philwelch 14y ago

And after that, if you keep thinking critically about it instead of taking comfort in having a seemingly logically coherent ideology, you start realizing that the entire framework of libertarianism is batshit crazy and your initial intuitions were not actually that far off. This leads to a healthy distrust of ideologies in general, which is only a win.

Steko 14y ago

"discharge Ron Paul as some sort of crazy guy without even listening to what he says" Or they read enough of what he has said and found it abhorrent. "composed of many different unrelated parts. Not true, Ron Paul ideas are ideas of libertarianism" Libertarianism and the coming race war.

jacobsimeon 14y ago

This comment is well intentioned but fails to compel any non-libertarian to consider Paul's opinion. It is true that Paul is unfairly (perhaps unjustly) portrayed by the media as, to put it plainly, crazy but whining about how unfair it is won't help matters. Ron Paul's message places personal, financial and social liberty at esteem and condemns government encroachment on these liberties. His career as a congressman is consistent with his message which is saying more than can be said of any other politician. For these reasons, the man deserves to be heard and he deserves your respect. The least anyone could do is read the actual transcript of the address--techcrunch doesn't do it justice. http://m.washingtonexaminer.com/transcript-ron-pauls-farewell-address-to-congress/article/2513544#.UKcsTZG9KK3 http://m.washingtonexaminer.com/transcript-ron-pauls-farewel...

danmaz74 14y ago

George E.P. Box's law: "All models are wrong, but some are useful". The problem with libertarianism/anarcho-capitalism, marxism/communism, etc. is that they don't acknowledge that truth and want to extend their models of human behavior well beyond the scope of their usefulness, as if human societies were simple, linear phenomena.

MaysonL 14y ago

And even more people disparage him as a nutcase after listening to him.

tzs 14y ago

Let's listen to some things Paul says and does: • Has no clue how the banking system works. Even the Cato Institute called him "incoherent". http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/dec/09/ron-paul/did-fed-create-15-trillion-during-bailout-and-send/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/dec/... • To lower the cost of health care he says we need to increase competition by increasing the availability of quack medicine (specifically homeopathic medicine) over science-based medicine. http://www.ronpaul.com/2009-09-24/ron-paul-we-need-true-competition-in-medical-care/ http://www.ronpaul.com/2009-09-24/ron-paul-we-need-true-comp... • Has repeatedly introduced legislation to reduce the scope of the First Amendment's establishment clause so that it would not apply to state and local government, and to remove Federal recognition of a right to privacy. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:H.R.539 http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:H.R.539: • His budget plan proposed immediate massive cuts in research in science and medicine, and didn't have anything allocated for the National Science Foundation or NASA. Also immediately eliminated programs for the poor (specifically the woman, infant, and children supplemental nutrition program and the low income home energy assistance program). (No cite, because his site appears to have taken down the page that had the budget plan). • Voted to block the USDA from even considering the possibility that there might be climate change and trying to figure out what impact that could have on the US food supply and the mission of the USDA. http://tinyurl.com/albm229 http://tinyurl.com/albm229 Here is what Paul wanted to stop: http://www.ocio.usda.gov/directives/doc/DR1070-001.pdf http://www.ocio.usda.gov/directives/doc/DR1070-001.pdf Sounds like a crazy guy to me.

snitko 14y ago
So, he's crazy because he doesn't want to regulate things. You believe homeopathy is bullshit - fine, I agree with you. We can campaign against it and inform people it's bullshit. But you and I have no rights to tell people what to believe and how to spend their money. I would like to specifically talk about climate change, though. I don't want to question the legitimacy of the claims that it's happening - to the best of my knowledge it is. However, people somehow assume it's definitely a bad thing, which is simply not true. Climate may indeed change in one place and make life of people more difficult, while it may also change in another place and make life more prosperous there. No scientists I know of can predict what effects exactly and on which places climate change is going to have. It seems to me, people who are afraid of climate change simply want to preserve the status quo. Not a bad thing - everybody wants to protect their life and assets. But we must recognize it for that - an attempt to preserve the status quo, not save the planet for the greater good. Back to Ron Paul: he may not be the guy I can agree 100% of the time on everything, but then you can never do that with anyone. Before trying to assess why he voted for this or that, one should understand the reasons why he did so. For instance, he voted against net neutrality, but not because he believed internet shouldn't be free - he believed the government itself cannot make it free, but competition can.