Glenn Greenwald: Progressives and the Ron Paul fallacies

Hightop · Jan 2, 2012

rimrocker said: ↑

I'm not sure Paul is to the left of anyone. On the drug thing, sure, he's against the war on drugs. So what? He's not against the war on drugs because of morality or logic. He's only against the war on drugs because it's being run by the Feds. He would let the states do whatever they wanted, which is not really what most people who think they like his drug stance hear when he talks about it.
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Like alcohol? Be skeered! God you are pathetic.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/bvFYCky0muY" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

"The role of the federal government is to protect our liberties. That means they should protect our religious liberties to do what we want; our intellectual liberty, but it also should protect our right to do to our body what we want, you know, what we take into our bodies."

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/etYrAZxCAKU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Kwame · Jan 2, 2012

Glen Greenwald just may be the best journalist in the entire country.

saitou · Jan 2, 2012

jo mama said: ↑

there are many liberals like rhad (whom you previously brought up) who are critical of obama on wiretapping, but rhad is not an obama supporter and will not be voting for him (which really makes your previous comparison irrelevant).
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i think rhad voted for obama last time. doesn't that count as an obama supporter who is able to be critical (to the point of no longer wanting to vote for him in the future)?

i never said 1 person = a general trend. and again, i dont feel the need to invoke other peoples names, especially when they are not involved in this discussion. what is point of this? you seem to be implying that im lying and you need proof of my claims...i related my experiences in the D&D wrt the greenwald article - believe me or dont...i dont care.
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yes, i'd like to see it, because my experience has been different. if you don't care, then i won't bother either.

saitou · Jan 2, 2012

Hightop said: ↑

Like alcohol? Be skeered! God you are pathetic.
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Thanks for proving my earlier point. Paul supporters are just as good at one-sided arguments as obama supporters.

rimrocker · Jan 2, 2012

Hightop said: ↑

Like alcohol? Be skeered! God you are pathetic.

"The role of the federal government is to protect our liberties. That means they should protect our religious liberties to do what we want; our intellectual liberty, but it also should protect our right to do to our body what we want, you know, what we take into our bodies."
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Try harder. In that video, the very first (and only real) argument he makes about the drug war falls very much in line with my post. The stuff after the first minute or so is stupid stuff used to buttress his "Republic-States Rights" belief.

jo mama · Jan 2, 2012

saitou said: ↑

i think rhad voted for obama last time. doesn't that count as an obama supporter who is able to be critical (to the point of no longer wanting to vote for him in the future)?
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no it doesnt, because again, rhad is not an obama supporter and will not be voting for him in 2012. your comparison is irrelevant. and i dont know who he voted for in 2008.

furthermore, rhad is only one poster - even if he was an obama supporter it would not negate the things i have said.

saitou said: ↑

yes, i'd like to see it, because my experience has been different. if you don't care, then i won't bother either.
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you do realize that its possible for other posters to have different experiences than you, right? this is just weird - why are you so hung up on seeing me call out other posters? i related my experiences here wrt the article - invoking the names of posters who are not even participating in this thread is not necessary, productive nor fair. im not making anything up - and its not that i dont care about this issue - its that i dont care if you believe me or not. especially to the point of me digging up old threads to "prove" it to you.

Hightop · Jan 2, 2012

rimrocker said: ↑

Try harder. In that video, the very first (and only real) argument he makes about the drug war falls very much in line with my post. The stuff after the first minute or so is stupid stuff used to buttress his "Republic-States Rights" belief.
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So you are in favor of the war on drugs? I understand. Liberals are all about control. And they are now seeing that their messiah and idea are complete failures. It must hurt.

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ICBzgPtCIjc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Northside Storm · Jan 2, 2012

Hightop said: ↑

So you are in favor of the war on drugs? I understand. Liberals are all about control. And they are now seeing that their messiah and idea are complete failures. It must hurt.
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Hightop, it looks like you should try lighting up a j or two. it might relax you.

saitou · Jan 2, 2012

jo mama said: ↑

furthermore, rhad is only one poster - even if he was an obama supporter it would not negate the things i have said.
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yes, and rhad is the only poster in the wiretapping thread. *sigh*

jo mama said: ↑

you do realize that its possible for other posters to have different experiences than you, right? this is just weird - why are you so hung up on seeing me call out other posters? i related my experiences here wrt the article - invoking the names of posters who are not even participating in this thread is not necessary, productive nor fair. im not making anything up - and its not that i dont care about this issue - its that i dont care if you believe me or not. especially to the point of me digging up old threads to "prove" it to you.
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i don't see what's weird about wanting to see things for myself. if you don't want to do it fine. i don't see why you are so hung up abt this or surprised ppl would want to see what you are basing your generalizations on.

rimrocker · Jan 2, 2012

Hightop said: ↑

So you are in favor of the war on drugs? I understand. Liberals are all about control. And they are now seeing that their messiah and idea are complete failures. It must hurt.

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/ICBzgPtCIjc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
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What are you talking about? There's nothing in my posts that praises the war on drugs. I was pointing out that Paul's criticism is not necessarily what many people agree with even though he couches it in language that appeals to a lot of folks.

For the record, Nixon (Repub) coined the phrase and started the DEA while HW (Repub) got the military and intelligence agencies involved and the Drug Czar position was created under his watch. Not to mention the Patriot Act under W.

GladiatoRowdy · Jan 2, 2012

rimrocker said: ↑

What are you talking about? There's nothing in my posts that praises the war on drugs. I was pointing out that Paul's criticism is not necessarily what many people agree with even though he couches it in language that appeals to a lot of folks.

For the record, Nixon (Repub) coined the phrase and started the DEA while HW (Repub) got the military and intelligence agencies involved and the Drug Czar position was created under his watch. Not to mention the Patriot Act under W.
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To be accurate, the "Drug Czar" position was created in 1982 under Reagan, not Bush the elder.

jo mama · Jan 3, 2012

saitou said: ↑

yes, and rhad is the only poster in the wiretapping thread. *sigh*
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lots of people are posting in the wiretapping thread, including myself. what is your point?

and why are you so obsessed w/ rhad? why do you keep bringing him up? as i have already said, rhad is only one poster - even if he was an obama supporter it would not negate the things i have said.

saitou said: ↑

i don't see what's weird about wanting to see things for myself. if you don't want to do it fine. i don't see why you are so hung up abt this or surprised ppl would want to see what you are basing your generalizations on.
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i have described what i based my generalizations on. you want me to name names of posters i was arguing w/ so you can "fact check" me or something. im really not sure what your deal is here - this is just weird.

im sorry my initial comment got your panties in such a bunch, but i promise you were the furthest thing from my mind when i came into this thread and posted.

rhadamanthus · Jan 3, 2012

thadeus said: ↑

Ron Paul has many perspectives I agree with, but that doesn't mean all his perspectives are equal.

Ron Paul's free-marketeerism would destroy this country far more quickly and with much greater speed than the current run of corrupt civil-liberties damaging politicians have.

It doesn't matter if 99 of his 100 ideas is a good idea if that last 1 is so bewilderingly misguided that it would actually lead the the collapse of this country.
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+1, agreed. Unfortunate, IMO.

rhadamanthus · Jan 3, 2012

I'm a topic in a thread! Interesting reading.

SeabrookMiglla · Jan 3, 2012

Ill go for paul.

their are some very fundemental flaws with the democratic party, especially with its stance on the war machine and the financial sector. They are no different from republicans on these fronts,and to be honest i think these two issues are of the utmost importance apart from education.

I mean i dont like pauls domestic agenda with his ideas of de regulating everything, because i trust the government more than the corporations. In a perfect world, i would be for less government. Although corporations are there to make profit, and do so at the expense of us.

rhadamanthus · Jan 3, 2012

Let's just put this here and see what happens.

The Moral Idiocy of Ron Paul

Did the Civil Rights Act of 1964 put America on the path to a police state? The answer is yes, according to Ron Paul, the Texas Republican Congressman and candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, Paul explained that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 “destroyed the principle of private property and private choices” and “undermine[d] the concept of liberty.” The candidate drew a direct line from the Civil Rights Act to illiberal legislation passed in the panic that followed the 9/11 attacks: “Look at what’s happened with the PATRIOT Act. They can come into our houses, our bedrooms our businesses … And it was started back then.”

By equating the Civil Rights Act, which expanded American civil liberty, with the Patriot Act, which reduced it, on the grounds that both are federal laws with sanctions, Ron Paul displays the moral idiocy of someone who declares that a person who pushes a little old lady out of the path of a bus is just as bad as a person who pushes a little old lady into the path of a bus, because both are equally guilty of pushing little old ladies around.

Like other libertarians, Ron Paul does not understand American values. The American experiment is an experiment in creating and maintaining a democratic republic, not a minimal state. American political culture is founded not on the theories of Ayn Rand or Ludwig von Mises but on the reasoning of natural rights theorists like John Locke, for whom coercion in the service of communal self-defense is perfectly legitimate. In Lockean social contract theory, in order to protect themselves from human predators, people form a community and then transfer the pooled power of self-defense to the community’s trustee, the state, the better to resist invasion and crime. While abuses of military and police power are to be guarded against, the idea that the military and police and government as such are inherently tyrannical, a familiar theme in libertarian and anarchist thought, is utterly alien to America’s Lockean republican tradition.

Libertarians typically argue that only government, backed by military and police power, can be tyrannical. Lockean republicans in contrast believe that private power located in the for-profit or non-profit sectors can be tyrannical, as well. By means of their agent, the state, the sovereign people legitimately can protect themselves from predation by private sector tyrants as well as public sector tyrants.

Libertarians are not the brightest lights in the candelabra, a fact that is evident from the alternatives they tend to offer to public prevention of private abuses. For example: if you don’t like working a hundred hours a week for twenty-five cents a day, then find another employer! It is obvious to intelligent people, if not libertarians, that more generous employers will price themselves out of a market whose standards are set by the most rapacious.

The other popular libertarian remedy for exploitation is to move somewhere else where you will be treated better. But what if you can’t emigrate? Well, it seems, you must suffer your exploitation in silence, rather than enlist the aid of the law in restraining your thuggish employer, your predatory landlord, your exploitative banker or the vendors who sell you toxic food and dangerous products.

Some libertarians concede the legitimacy of government coercion in protecting property rights. But in doing so, these libertarians, like Ron Paul, give up any principled objection to government coercion. They simply want government coercion to be used for some purposes—protecting property rights—and not others—enforcing civil rights.

The Civil Rights Act did not mark an intrusion of government into a realm previously governed purely by what Paul calls “private choices.” Until the federal Civil Rights Act was passed, the coercive power of state and local governments was routinely used to enforce the “private choices” and “property rights” of racists. If a diner owner banned blacks from his diner, and blacks sat down at the counter and insisted on being served, then the diner owner could call the police, who, protecting the property rights of the owner, would drag the would-be black patrons of the restaurant off to jail.

The straightforward way to interpret Paul’s remarks on CNN is to read him as saying that bigoted property owners, like owners of restaurants, should to this day have the right to call on the coercive power of the police department to enforce their decisions to refuse to serve certain categories of customers on their property. Anti-semitic store owners, for example, should have the right not merely to put up a “No Jews” sign, but also to summon the police, at the taxpayer’s expense, to arrest any Jew who insisted on entering the store.

Perhaps I am misreading Paul. Perhaps he does not think that business owners should have retained the right, abolished by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, to have the government, in the form of the police, use coercion to enforce their racist “private choices” to exclude certain classes of clients. Perhaps he thinks that the police should not be involved in the effort to expel the Jew from the Judenrein store. Perhaps true libertarianism means that the anti-semitic store owner should try to persuade the unwanted Jew in the store to leave by noncoercive means—“Shoo, Jew!” Or perhaps authentic libertarianism would sanction private not public coercion, so the Jew-hating store owner should be allowed to hire Slow-Eye Pete and Philadelphia Jack to enforce the store’s No-Jew policy.

But I don’t think this is what Paul meant to say. From his statement that the Civil Rights act “destroyed the principle of private property and private choices,” I think his meaning is quite clear: civil rights legislation at any level—federal, state or local—should never have been passed. To this day, store owners should be free to call on the public police at public expense to drag blacks, Jews, or members of other groups that the owners do not like from their business establishments, in the name of property rights.

Should we be impressed if Paul says that as a personal matter he would oppose such things, while defending their legality? It is hard to see any daylight between an overt racist and someone who claims to oppose racism or anti-semitism, but also denounces the only effective ways to put a stop to them—that is, civil rights laws. If you argue that private racism is bad but anti-racist laws are worse, and if you have no problem with the state’s coercive power when it enforces racism but object to coercive state power only in the service of anti-racism, then you cannot complain when others draw their own conclusions about your motives (even if, unlike Ron Paul, you did not publish white supremacist newsletters for years under your own name).

Abraham Lincoln dissected the sophistical rhetoric of people like Ron Paul, long before the noble word “liberty” was tortured into “libertarianism.” In 1864, during the Civil War, he told an audience:

The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name———liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names———liberty and tyranny.

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one. Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty…
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Depressio · Jan 3, 2012

The way I see Ron Paul is that he would have the power to do some things I agree with (end the wars), and would need Congress approval for some of his crazier ideas (end the EPA). There's protection against his crazy positions. Candidates always talk about what they'll do, but a lot of people don't seem to realize that the President can't do most of that.

The risk is Ron Paul with a Republican super majority in both the House and the Senate. That would not be good at all.

Hightop · Jan 3, 2012

rhadamanthus said: ↑

Let's just put this here and see what happens.
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Why not the NDAA thread?

saitou · Jan 3, 2012

jo mama said: ↑

lots of people are posting in the wiretapping thread, including myself. what is your point?
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They are counter examples which you ignore. it's like hightop demanding "where's the outrage" in a thread full of outrage.

jo mama said: ↑

and why are you so obsessed w/ rhad? why do you keep bringing him up? as i have already said, rhad is only one poster - even if he was an obama supporter it would not negate the things i have said.
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you are the only one that would read my last post saying there are OTHER posters besides rhad... and take away from it that i'm obsessed w/ rhad.

jo mama said: ↑

i have described what i based my generalizations on. you want me to name names of posters i was arguing w/ so you can "fact check" me or something. im really not sure what your deal is here - this is just weird.

im sorry my initial comment got your panties in such a bunch, but i promise you were the furthest thing from my mind when i came into this thread and posted.
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You make generalizations and get your panties in such a bunch when someone asks for a little bit of evidence - this is just weird.

DonnyMost · Jan 3, 2012

rhadamanthus said: ↑

Let's just put this here and see what happens.
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That's one of the worst pieces from Salon I've seen in a long, long time.

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