- Does America have a future? Unfortunately we don't have
a lot of choices here. You want Rudy Giuliani, who dressed up as a woman
and marched in the gay pride parade, and who has been profiteering off
9/11, or you want Hillary, who strongly supported the genocidal sanctions
against Iraqi children while she was First Lady? Both of them have promised
AIPAC to bomb Iran. Also, Obama is influenced by AIPAC. At this point,
there is nothing more important than pulling our troops out of Iraq, Afghanistan,
and everywhere. I heard that Cynthia McKinney might run as a Green, but
her chances of winning are slim because the Green Party has no money and
has very few active volunteers. Ron Paul actually has a fighting chance
to stop the wars because he has a strong base of support among the Young
Republicans who are very enthusiastic and remarkably sane. He wins every
debate because he makes a "self-interest" argument for ending
the wars which works with Americans. Even Jay Leno respected him.
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- Ron Paul is a Constitutionalist and a non-interventionist.
Everybody disagrees with him about something. The leftists hate him because
he's anti-abortion. But again, we have to put aside our personal opinions
and stop the war immediately or lose our democracy. We only have one chance.
The only thing that can unite Americans is the Constitution (as flawed
a document as it is - but it's better than the lawlessness of Bush). Not
a single Jewish organization supports Ron Paul for president.
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- Ron Paul approaches the Constitution almost like an Islamic
jurist. He did not say he didn't think universal health care might be a
good idea. He said it's not in the Constitution that the US government
has the role of providing health care. If you want to do it, then you have
to amend the Constitution. If you allow Congress to do things that the
Constitution doesn't allow, then we no longer have a constitutional democracy.
They can declare war without an act of Congress, they can cancel your currency
value, they can put you in jail without evidence, etc.
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- I have never come across him saying anything racist.
He did say, "I certainly join my colleagues in urging Americans to
celebrate the progress this country has made in race relations. However,
contrary to the claims of the supporters of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
and the sponsors of H.Res. 676, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not improve
race relations or enhance freedom. Instead, the forced integration dictated
by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 increased racial tensions while diminishing
individual liberty."
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- That is certainly true. Boston's bizarre busing system
destroyed neighborhoods which had closely knit communities that worked
together on a local level to organize social programs like Boy Scouts,
now we have a welfare state where you have to enter a lottery to get your
kids into a decent school, and they waste a lot of gas busing kids across
town when there is a school walking distance from their house. Nobody attends
Boy Scouts anymore, and neighborhood crime is rampant. The situation for
blacks and whites has worsened since the 1960s because our economy is going
down the drain due to our foreign policy. Studies have shown that the more
racially mixed a neighborhood is, the less likely it is that the people
will be active in community organizing. So that leads to increased dependency
on government services. I guess there is idealism on one hand, and the
reality on the other hand. In any case, he has a rational argument for
his views, he is not a racist frothing at the mouth.
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- The current drug policy in the United States is completely
irrational. The CIA invades a country, forces them to grow drugs, then
the CIA brings it into the country and sells it to the police, who then
sell it to the drug mafia, and then we spend billions of dollars putting
people in jail for non-violent crimes. By decriminalizing drugs, and dismantling
the CIA, as Paul proposes, you will have far fewer social problems created
by criminal mafias and gangs because something like cocaine would no longer
be profitable. And our tax money would no longer pay for these drug wars.
That was also the approach in the early days of Islam. Scholars, including
Caliph Ali refused to criminalize intoxicating herbs because there was
nothing specifically in the Quran outlawing any plant. There was no criminal
offense for hashish or opium, and usually they were prescribed by doctors
as medicines. Avincenna (I forgot his name in Arabic) talks a lot about
the medieval Muslim uses of what we now consider to be "illegal"
drugs. The drug wars have cost US taxpayers billions of dollars and have
not improved anything. So it's useful to look at how America used to deal
with these issues. Did you know that George Washington grew marijuana on
the White House lawn? Farmers used to pay their taxes with hemp. The laws
changed in the 1940s due to pressure from special interest groups. The
herbicide (genocide of plant species) led to great dust storms, the ruination
of farmers, and the Great Depression.
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- I am aware of "states rights" connection with
the American history of slavery, however in this day and age, states rights
gives you protection from Bush. And it also protects people. Because as
long as, for example, gay marriage is a states issue, then every state
can decide if it does or doesn't want to have gay marriage. If you gave
the Feds the authority to make that decision, a special interest lobby
could convince the federal government to legalize or outlaw gay marriage
for the entire country. So there are pros and cons to Ron Paul's positions.
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- Affirmative action has not succeeded in addressing inequalities
in society. What most average black and white people want is more money
to live. So again, smaller government would decrease the individual burden
on average people to sustain an empire with their taxes and we'd have less
poverty. Dr. Paul is a moral person so I'm sure that minorities could work
with him to end poverty in ways that conform to the Constitution. In Roxbury
here, the black community has been having a lot of meetings to figure out
what to do because even though they succeeded in getting federal funding
for all kinds of stuff, the crime in the neighborhood is just getting worse
and worse. So, the socialist approach isn't working and Ron Paul's approach
- locally based government, is what the black community is doing anyway,
out of necessity. The #1 concern for black youth right now is not wanting
to get killed in Iraq. Paul has a young black following.
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- Bottom line, we have to stop the war. Ron Paul is approachable.
He is neither a criminal nor insane. As long as you can make an argument
from the point of view of the Constitution you can get by. Sort of like
when you are dealing with the Taliban, you have to make your argument based
on Quran/Hadith and they will listen.
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- About immigration, I think it's a non-issue for those
who immigrated here legally. I suspect that the anti-Mexican rhetoric is
playing to popular sentiment, yet with his "small government"
proposal, we'd have less of a police state working night and day to bust
into the homes of the Mexicans, so they still might be better off with
Ron Paul, and also, fewer Mexicans would join the US military and kill
Muslims in order to get a green card, if there was no war. Ideally, the
US should have a less predatorial relationship with Mexico so that their
country would not be so impoverished that their young people would all
have to leave home.
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- Some people feel that "ideally" they want some
kind of welfare system with open borders. They don't want to support Ron
Paul because they disagree with this or that. However, what we have right
now is Bush and a government that has descended into lawlessness. No amount
of protesting is going to automatically transform what we have into a socialist
utopia. In fact, the US is bankrupt. So either we give in to complete tyranny,
or we stick to the Constitution. I don't see any other choice. There is
no other candidate who has indicated willingness to uphold the Constitution
when it comes to declaring wars, detainee rights, and our personal freedoms.
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- To learn more about Ron Paul, visit youtube.com - ronpaulforums.com
- To help Ron Paul, visit teaparty07.com - ronpaul.meetup.com
- ronpaul2008.com
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- http://karinfriedemann.blogspot.com/2007/11/why-not-ron-paul.html
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