What do you think of Ron Paul's war stance, and other issues

[CCS]

Think he is just lying about his anti-war stance, like every presidential candidate before him?


I've watched some of his debates. He seems very healthy and energetic, like someone half his age. He is not some passive small candidate. His ads have ripped into Newt's polling numbers in Iowa. He is a very sharp debater when the media lets him speak.


I wonder why the establishment media does not let him speak more during the debates.



He also thinks prostitution should be legal as long as it is consentual. He is definitely not one of the usual religious republicans. His main challenge is he has to win the republican primary without the help of more liberal voters, unless some will register republican just to vote for him. There is not democrat primary, since Obama is unopposed, so you might as well just so you don't have to fear someone like Newt getting elected.




Would you rather have your #1 and #2 choices being the only two on the ballot, even if your #2 might win, or would you rather it be your #1 choice and your #5 choice?

 

[HughJass]

From what I have read and seen of him, his so called anti-war stance sounds like it's born more out of ultra-nationalism than a moral objection to the use of state violence. When I've heard him talk on foreign policy his positions are more often than not framed in the context of whether or not it's good for America, not whether or not a certain policy is illegal or morally indefensible.

I could be wrong as I'm not as read-up about him as his supporters are. Or maybe he just frames his arguments that way because he knows that as an American politician if you start talking about the country's past wars being immoral or illegal your easy to brand as anti-American, unpatriotic, sympathizing with enemy, hate the troops etc from rival politicians.

Either way, I think he is sincere about what he says regarding foreign policy. I think he would do what he says regardless of the political cost. It would be interesting to see what would happen if he wins. I hope he does.

As for his other policies they are probably why none of the OWS protesters you mentioned in the other thread would vote for him. He could probably peel a few of them away, no doubt there are plenty who are sick of the wars who would be willing to back him just for that reason but I think they are clued up enough to know that Paul would maintain (and probably increase) the very thing they are protesting about- corporate domination of the country.

There are plenty of admirable people on the libertarian right in America like Paul Craig Roberts, Philip Giraldi, Justin Raimondo etc but Bob Black pwned their philosophy years ago:

The liberals and conservatives and Libertarians who lament totalitarianism are phoneys and hypocrites.There is more freedom in any moderately de-Stalinized dictatorship than there is in the ordinary American workplace. You find the same sort of hierarchy and discipline in an office or factory as you do in a prison or a monastery. In fact, as Foucault and others have shown, prisons and factories came in at about the same time, and their operators consciously borrowed from each other's control techniques. A worker is a part-time slave. The boss says when to show up, when to leave, and what to do in the meantime. He tells you how much work to do and how fast. He is free to carry his control to humiliating extremes, regulating, if he feels like it, the clothes you wear or how often you go to the bathroom. With a few exceptions he can fire you for any reason, or no reason. He has you spied on by snitches and supervisors, he amasses a dossier on every employee. Talking back is called 'insubordination,' just as if a worker is a naughty child, and it not only gets you fired, it disqualifies you for unemployment compensation. . .The demeaning system of domination I've described rules over half the waking hours of a majority of women and the vast majority of men for decades, for most of their lifespans. For certain purposes it's not too misleading to call our system democracy or capitalism or -- better still -- industrialism, but its real names are factory fascism and office oligarchy. Anybody who says these people are 'free' is lying or stupid."

 

[CCS]

It is true that Ron Paul supports corporate speech. But he also is against the government giving money to corporations. So he would be ending the feedback loop that gives them so much power. I am against corporate personhood, but I don't think any of the other republicans are any better than Ron on this issue.

 

[Bryan]

Ron Paul is so strangely isolationist, I think he's an embarrassment to both political parties -- both Republican and Democrat. I doubt anybody really takes him very seriously, except for a few kooks here and there.