Glenn Greenwald: Progressives and the Ron Paul fallacies

isolationist is but one of the many misused and abused word in politics by the media and other candidates to discredit instead of debate. very lazy but works like a charm.

"a policy of national isolation by abstention from alliances and other international political and economic relations " the definition of isolationism according to websters.

i think this is exactly what we need.

afganastan, iraq, pakistan, isreal, and egypt over 20 billion in foreign aid in 2009 alone. over 50 billion total for all countries in 2009. all the while our national infrastructure is deteriorating our schools and academia are falling way behind. almost every major industry we are also falling behind, agriculture, manufacturing, etc... we used to produce the most cars, food, tech, etc...

so what is the real fallacy here?

 

Because anybody with half a brain and even a moderate understanding of history knows that it never works out to be as simplistically idyllic as you imply above.

 

again, the "counter examples" dont negate anything i have said. furthermore, i have not ignored them. i have probably dozens of posts in the wiretapping thread, most of them in agreement w/ what rhad was saying.

but thats not what you said...

was this an attempt at sarcasm? what were you trying to say there? you keep invoking rhad in order to discredit what i am saying w/out recognizing that he is only one poster.

no...its weird that you would demand me to dig up old threads and name the names of people i had previous arguments with so that you can "fact check" me. in 10 years of posting here nobody has ever made this demand. all i did was read the article and post my own experiences wrt to it - i did not realize that i was supposed to provide links to old threads to back up my generalizations.

you notice that you have not discussed the original article at all. instead you are focused on demanding that i name the names of people who i had previously gotten in arguments with. what is the point of all this silliness?

 

Feel free to invoke me. I may not answer or I may summon all my might to cast down terrible judgment. You never know.

 

Any US politician accused of isolationism should consider it a compliment. It's a disgusting and inaccurate smear that right winger pundits like to toss around.

 

Probably already posted. Some of these votes are unconscionable...

Ron Paul's Remarkable No Votes: Holocaust Memorial Funding, Ethics Offices, Civil Rights Bills

First Posted: 12/28/11 05:38 PM ET Updated: 12/28/11 05:58 PM ET

When Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) announced his most recent run for the White House back in May 2011, MSNBC Host Chris Matthews pressed him on the extent of his libertarian convictions. Would he have opposed the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act had he been in office when it was considered, Matthews wanted to know.

It was a hypothetical question and Paul gave a fairly broad answer, saying he appreciated the intent of the law but disagreed with the specific language on property rights.

Left unmentioned was that Paul had -- in more than a hypothetical sense -- already cast a vote on the famous bill. On June 24, 2004, the House of Representatives took up a resolution "recognizing and honoring the 40th anniversary of congressional passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964." Four hundred and fourteen members voted yes, and 18 didn't show up to vote. Only one member said nay: Ron Paul.

Throughout his congressional tenure, Paul has built a reputation as a legislator who marches to his own distinctive drumbeat. He is a Republican by label, not in the fraternal meaning. Oftentimes, his voting habits leave him utterly isolated from the rest of his colleagues, Republicans and Democrats alike.

"Ron Paul was his own island," said one Republican leadership aide. "Leadership tried not to visit and rarely had to. Sometimes we sailed through."

Using C-SPAN's database, The Huffington Post examined all the nay votes Paul cast during his current stint in Congress, from 1997 to the present. (Paul served several terms in the 1970s and 80s, but the C-SPAN archive doesn't stretch back that far.) From there, we pulled out every instance in which the congressman was either alone in voting against a measure or one of just ten or fewer House members to do so. There were more than 675 such instances.

A close examination of those votes -- some of which were on repeat bills, others of which were simple procedural votes -- helps illustrate just what principles drive the man who could very well win the all-important 2012 Iowa caucuses. But it also underscores how the congressman's black-and-white worldview of federal politics has led him to vote against legislation on constitutional grounds even if he may personally back it, from funding for a Holocaust memorial to resources for anti-terrorism training to child abuse prevention legislation.

After casting that no vote in commemoration of the Civil Rights Act, Paul was cheered inside Libertarian circles. His former chief of staff, Lew Rockwell (who is believed to be the author of many of Paul's controversial newsletters) wrote an item on his website declaring that "only the heroic Ron Paul dissented" on the legislation. In mainstream GOP circles, however, Paul was an outcast. George W. Bush held a White House ceremony featuring many Republicans praising the bill's anniversary.

Three years later, a similar situation would unfold. On June 20, 2007, Paul was one of two members of the entire House of Representatives to vote against the "Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act," a bill that authorized $100 million over ten years to investigate unresolved civil rights-era murders. Paul's campaign did not return a request for comment for this article. But it stands to reason that he agreed with the complaint lodged by the other dissenting member, Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.), who said he thought "federal and state law enforcement units" could handle those cases "where there are good leads on suspects."

Civil rights issues weren't the only areas where Paul was a man alone in Congress. On foreign policy matters, and those pertaining to Israel in particular, he has routinely isolated himself from all other lawmakers.

On July 30, 1997, Paul was the lone dissenter on a House-passed resolution titled "Expressing the sense of the Congress regarding the terrorist bombing in the Jerusalem market." Three-and-a-half years later, he was the lone dissenter on a House-passed resolution congratulating Ariel Sharon for his election as Israeli prime minister. In July 20, 2006, he was one of eight no votes on another House-passed resolution sponsored by now-Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) condemning terrorist attacks against Israel.

The list goes on.

Paul's supporters have long argued that his posture towards Israel is driven not out of some latent anti-Semitism, but conviction that U.S. policy in the Middle East is imbalanced and over-engaged. And, indeed, a look at other votes on Paul's resume shows that he's been an equal opportunity offender.

In February 2005, he was the only member in the House to vote against a resolution "commending the Palestinian people" for conducting a "free and fair" presidential election. During the height of the Green Revolution, Paul was the lone House member to vote against a resolution "expressing support for all Iranian citizens who embrace the values of freedom, human rights, civil liberties, and rule of law."

Even when the terrorist target was America, Paul played a stubborn role: On September 23, 1997, he was one of seven members voting against a motion to suspend the rules and pass the Oklahoma City National Memorial Act of 1997.

None of these votes had any real-world implications, save that they set Paul apart from his colleagues as an adherent to a strictly limited foreign policy. As a result, they rarely come up when discussion turns to his presidential aspirations. They represent, as one foreign policy operative who worked on U.S.-United Nations relations noted, "Ron Paul being Ron Paul." But not all of the congressman's no votes were on ceremonial matters.

• On September 7, 2000, Paul was alone in his opposition to a bill exempting the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum from limits established during the previous year's budget. The bill ultimately became law.

• On March 10, 1998, he was one of two House members to vote against a motion to suspend the rules and pass the Birth Defects Prevention Act, which promoted better data collection and sharing on the topic. The bill ultimately became law.

• On November 4, 1997, he was one of two members to vote against a motion to suspend the rules and pass a bill that would "require the Attorney General to establish a program in local prisons to identify, prior to arraignment, criminal aliens and aliens who are unlawfully present in the United States." The bill ultimately became law.

• On October 27, 2000, he was one of two votes against the Assistance for International Malaria Control Act. The bill, which was sponsored by former Sen. Jesse Helms, eventually became law.

• On February 1, 2000, Paul was one of two no votes on a motion to suspend the rules and pass the Child Abuse Prevention and Enforcement Act, which provided more state grant funding for criminal justice and child welfare agencies to collect and share data on child abuse. The bill ultimately became law.

• On December 15, 2009, Paul was the only member to vote against a motion to suspend the rules and pass the "First Responder Anti-Terrorism Training Resources Act" which loosened restrictions on the type of financial help the Department of Homeland Security could get for the purpose of terrorism preparedness and prevention. The bill ultimately became law.

• Paul was one of only three House members to vote against a conference report creating a commission to investigate the 9/11 attacks. One of the other two to vote against the measure (which became law) is former Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.), the current Secretary of Transportation.

• On October 17, 2001, Paul was the lone no vote on a motion to suspend the rules and pass the Financial Anti-Terrorism Act of 2001, which dramatically heightened rules and enforcement on funds that went to terrorist or terrorist-connected organizations. The bill wouldn't become law but portions of it were put into the PATRIOT Act.

• On November 8, 1999, Paul was the lone nay vote on a motion to suspend the rules and pass an amendment to fund the Office of Government Ethics.

• On July 1, 2010, he was one of four members who voted against a motion to suspend the rules and pass an amendment that prohibited "any person from performing lobbying activities on behalf of a client which is determined by the Secretary of State to be a State sponsor of terrorism."

There are, of course, many more. Paul was one of two House members to vote against a September 2008 motion to adopt a bill extending a "grant program for armor vests for law enforcement officers." That same month, he was one of two members to vote against suspending a rule and adopting a bill that would require group health plans to ensure that inpatient coverage and radiation therapy were provided for breast cancer treatment.

Paul was the only member to vote against a House measure expressing condolences to the families and victims of the February 2010 Chilean earthquake. He was also the only member to vote against a House measure expressing condolences to the victims of the Haiti earthquake. And when the House considered a resolution that would make any organ donor eligible for a Stephanie Tubbs Jones Gift of Life medal, in honor of the late congresswoman, he was, once again, the lone vote in opposition.

All of these votes have explanations that Paul and his supporters have made in various forms throughout his rise on the national political scene. Usually, they boil down to a simple argument: the legislation is either antithetical to small government convictions or contradicts the text of the Constitution. Why, for instance, expand the Department of Homeland Security's capacity to accept gifts when the department should never have been created in the first place? Why give more money for malaria control in other countries when the United States has its own medical issues with which to contend.

But for Paul's critics -- Democrats and Republicans alike -- governance doesn't take place in such a confined vacuum. Moreover, they say, his voting record provides real-life proof of the turmoil that would result from his style of leadership if he were to become president.

"I never once saw him in the Speaker's Office, come out of the Leader's office or attend a Whip dinner," said a former GOP leadership aide, who worked with Paul in previous Congresses. "The guy marches to the beat of his own drum which was fine because there were enough conservative Democrats that we never needed his vote."

The aide emailed The Huffington Post minutes later: "Of course that quote will probably help him!"

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/28/ron-paul-voting-record_n_1173255.html

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds..."
Emerson

 

Question, since it is so unconscionable, did the author do any digging to find out if there were any pork components to this legislation? Or how about digging up voting that really matters like say the Patriot Act or Iraq?

 

You'll need to address your questions to the author.

"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…"
Abraham Lincoln

 

Actually, I was asking you because of the language you used to assess his voting record discussed. Based on your response, I'll assume it wasn't something you considered.

 

the guy I feel sorry for in this is Dennis Kucinich, who, in many ways is just as unelectible and has similarly impractical goals (though on the much saner side of the ledger) and yet has never had the kind of press exposure and rabid fan club as Dr Paul. Despite a hotter wife. Seems unfair.

 

I assessed his voting record based on the fact that he voted "no" on the legislation listed.

I feel no need to rationalize his voting against protecting children from child abuse or against civil rights legislation.

Here's another one for you to defend...

Race, liberty and Ron Paul
The libertarian standard bearer trashes the Civil Rights Act
By Michael Lind .

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…

http://www.salon.com/2012/01/03/race_liberty_and_ron_paul/

 

Sorry, but you are wrong, in my opinion. Ask the ghost of Franklin D. Roosevelt if isolationism existed in the United States prior to Pearl Harbor. Not only did it exist, but it kept FDR from supporting Great Britain as she stood alone against Hitler's Nazi juggernaut, except by subterfuge. Between 1935 and 1937, 3 Neutrality Acts were passed. The 1935 act, signed on August 31, 1935, imposed a general embargo on "trading in arms and war materials with all parties in a war." American isolationists were a strong force in American politics, and certainly in Congress.

I see Ron Paul as an isolationist of the same stripe as those in America during the '30's. They thought the United States could be an "island" in the world, safe from harm as long as we stayed out of "foreign entanglements." They were wrong then, and Ron Paul is wrong today. As for your "50 billion in foreign aid in 2009 alone," that is a tiny fraction of a trillion dollar national budget, and the bulk of it is military aid. I would argue that we don't spend enough on foreign aid, the kind of foreign aid that helps impoverished people in other countries get adequate food and an education. Most of the military aid is basically a "bribe" to prevent war in the Middle East. Why? Because it is in our national interest.

 

That's what I said, right!? (Because voluntary association obviously means disenfranchising blacks.)

 

Nah, not interested in defending Ron Paul. I just don't care for sloppy journalism. I respect the opinions people have both ways about Paul. He's certainly an enigma because of his consistancy and predictability.

 

You could probably be a bit more clear on why, "it never works out to be as symplistically idyllic as imply above." I don't really see what's simiplistically idyllic about people choosing who they want to associate with on their own.

 

Rhad, Koji, this was the common sense answer I was hoping for.

 

Fair enough. No harm, no foul.

I am not a Ron supporter and finding some justification for the "no" buried within the legislation would not change my mind about him.

Though, I could understand the need for a Ron supporter to find some way to justify those votes.

 

...seems you've overslept MrVanWinkle804. That discussion was had 50 yrs ago. And dajuice: LA's Mr Sterling agrees with your landlord example.

 

And Ron would have voted against it...on principle...hmmm

 

I don't agree with Sterling's choices, and if I myself were a landlord I would be quite different, but I respect Sterling's right to chose who he lets live in his establishment.