Commenting Policy

8 comments

• Comment Link Thursday, 15 September 2011 18:12 posted by Chris Dierkes

  Ron Paul's got a lot of crazy ideas.
  
  Including but not limited to:
  
  --Returning to the gold standard
  --His answer to the health care in the debate the other night
  --Ending essentially any federal regulatory agency
  --No Amnesty for already in country illegal immigrants
  --Ending birthright citizenship
  --Global Warming is a hoax
  
  He's got some good ideas about civil liberties (relative to the Drug War and War on Terror). I've always found the liberals who like Ron Paul a really weird phenomenon. Have they just not actually looked at this voting record or platform?
  
  I will give Ron Paul this--the man believes his principles and ideas. Even the insanely wrongheaded ones.
  
  He is really fun to watch in debates though.
• Comment Link Saturday, 17 September 2011 22:26 posted by Philip Corkill

  As complete an outsider as I can be - I was introduced to both Michelle Bachmann and Ron Paul by Beams and Struts (nice work;-) - this guy just seems like a much more friendly person to me than Bachmann.
  
  That's my most politically astute analysis. Anyone who can retain even a modicum of friendliness or beauty and work as a politician has at least one outstanding capability.
• Comment Link Sunday, 18 September 2011 00:36 posted by David Marshall

  Nice way of putting it, Andrew. I would add that the man seems to have a pretty good heart and a pretty pure motive as well. I don't know what he does behind the scenes, really, in terms of campaign funds, paybacks, and so forth, but he seems to want to do good things.
  
  But wanting to do good things isn't quite enough; you also have to know how to do something good. As Chris said, he wants to remove all regulation, which would leave private citizens to fend off corporations by themselves. "They would have courts of law," says Paul. But the corporations have armies of lawyers and could delay forever making it so costly and time consuming to fight them, and even if you did, the damage might be done by the time the trial was over.
  
  He is humorous, but it's alarming how so many otherwise intelligent people have fallen for his way of thinking. I think thinking on this sort of thing--political systems, economic policy, public policy--is really a line of development unto itself.
  
  Come to think of it, since it is a line of development unto itself it should really be taught in schools. That way people might be able to make informed decisions about these things when they're adults. As it is, people study math, science, English, and learn politics from Rush Limbaugh or Fox News, which evidently isn't very good at developing people along this line.
  
  Wow, it took me too long to figure that out. All this time I've just been thinking there's a general problem with the education system, which there is of course. But if it's true that this sort of thing represents a different line of development, like any other discipline, then it really should be taught in schools. Even if they had teachers with narrow ideologies it should give students a good start on this line and at least give them a better roadmap for later learning.
• Comment Link Tuesday, 20 September 2011 23:45 posted by Andrew Baxter

  Chris, you seem to privilege what appear to me to be niggly details of procedure and governance over the truly important issues of civil liberties. If anything, the United States is/was a beacon of individual freedom that stood so heroically against a backdrop of totalitarianism, monarchism, and class that gripped, and still does grip much of the world.
  
  What Mr. Paul stands for of importance are the very ideals of that so hallowed of republics the USA maybe never was, but always strove to be. The last few decade - maybe more in the case of the drug wars - has seen these values tossed aside in favour of 'state security'. His crazy ideas on the gold standard - crazy? really? I'm not convinced - or how to fix health care - what you have down there now it seems to me is crazy already - cannot, and certainly DO not outweigh his position on the most basic ideals of the republic. He's one of the only sane one's left anymore.
• Comment Link Wednesday, 21 September 2011 00:39 posted by Chris Dierkes

  @Andrew.
  
  Huh? I'm not really sure i get your response. I don't think governance is a 'niggly' details :). [Also I didn't mention any proceduralism...that would be another post altogether).
  
  I appreciate Ron Paul's ideals of liberty to be sure, but for me the question is how does the person practically think through the implications of said values. Not all libertarians are big fans of Ron Paul.
  
  My views are closer to those of Michael Lind and his discussion of 4 US republics:
  
  http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/feature/2008/11/07/fourth_republic
  
  This is a much longer conversation, but I don't think political philosophy occurs in a vacuum, specifically (but not only) technology, economics, and ecology (LL and LR respectively in integral terms).
• Comment Link Thursday, 22 September 2011 00:47 posted by Andrew Baxter

  Maybe my response was simply a snippet of a much larger debate I'm having with you that began way back with my prediction of the US republic's demise. And maybe you didn't even know we were still having that debate. Apologies.
  
  My point Chris is that the two most corrosive policies at work in the United States are the War on Terror and the War on Drugs, and on these issues, Paul is by no means 'crazy'. All other issues are secondary in my mind...because if you don't have basic civil rights protected and supported by your government, then the other things, the details don't really matter.
  
  I understand your insistence that political philosophy doesn't happen in a vacuum, and I agree wholeheartedly, but I would argue that while technology, economics and ecology - other quadrants -
  are of little importance in the absence of individual liberty. On this point others may not agree, but to my mind, Ron Paul is bang on when he insists the government should have a compelling reason to listen to your phone calls, search your car, or strip-search you at the airport...not just some vague notion of 'security'. Its very easy to forget why those safeguards were put in place in the beginning; it's just too easy to be complacent about their importance to a well-functioning democracy.
  
  You question why liberals might actually like the man, and I would argue that it is on these counts that he draws support, my support at least.
• Comment Link Thursday, 22 September 2011 01:05 posted by Chris Dierkes

  A,
  
  I get where you are coming from--I mean in terms of our prior debates.
  
  I don't totally agree that War on Drugs & Terror are the 2 most corrosive. Surely they are up there.
  
  I think something of a change in how we understand privacy (and governance) is a necessity.
  
  Jack Balkin's work on the National Surveillance State is really important.
  
  http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1141524
• Comment Link Thursday, 22 September 2011 23:45 posted by Trevor Malkinson

  Thought this article from the Washington Post on Paul was timely for this piece:"Last time, in 2008, Paul was ignored because his ideas sounded crazy. This time, he’s being ignored because his ideas have become commonplace".
  
  http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-ron-paul-is-winning-the-gop-primary/2011/09/21/gIQAWiXulK_story.html