The Progressive Dilemma: Ron Paul Versus Obama
posted by Rae Liera | January 13, 2012
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IcerocketThe picture says it all, but read the article, too. This comes from The Liberator Online - libertarians extraordinaire - quoting Glenn Greenwald - a progressive willing to tell the truth about his parties' leadership. A patriot in the truest sense of the word.
Anybody who truly values peace should register Republican and vote for RP. Forget your gay marriage rights, your healthcare, your college education. Save lives first! We'll work the rest of it out after we've made the world a significantly safer place to be.
Here's the article:
The Progressive Dilemma: Ron Paul Versus Obama
Progressive civil libertarian blogger Glenn Greenwald has taken a lot of heat from his fellow progressives for a great and provocative recent column in which he states the obvious: Ron Paul is far better on numerous key foreign policy and civil liberties issues than President Obama.
The column is entitled “Progressives and the Ron Paul Fallacies,” and here are some key excerpts:
“The candidate supported by progressives -- President Obama -- …holds heinous views on a slew of critical issues and himself has done heinous things with the power he has been vested. He has slaughtered civilians -- Muslim children by the dozens -- not once or twice, but continuously in numerous nations with drones, cluster bombs and other forms of attack. He has sought to overturn a global ban on cluster bombs. He has institutionalized the power of Presidents -- in secret and with no checks -- to target American citizens for assassination-by-CIA, far from any battlefield. He has waged an unprecedented war against whistleblowers, the protection of which was once a liberal shibboleth. He rendered permanently irrelevant the War Powers Resolution, a crown jewel in the list of post-Vietnam liberal accomplishments, and thus enshrined the power of Presidents to wage war even in the face of a Congressional vote against it. His obsession with secrecy is so extreme that it has become darkly laughable in its manifestations, and he even worked to amend the Freedom of Information Act (another crown jewel of liberal legislative successes) when compliance became inconvenient.
“He has entrenched for a generation the once-reviled, once-radical Bush/Cheney Terrorism powers of indefinite detention, military commissions, and the state secret privilege as a weapon to immunize political leaders from the rule of law. He has shielded Bush era criminals from every last form of accountability. He has vigorously prosecuted the cruel and supremely racist War on Drugs, including those parts he vowed during the campaign to relinquish -- a war which devastates minority communities and encages and converts into felons huge numbers of minority youth for no good reason. He has empowered thieving bankers through the Wall Street bailout, Fed secrecy, efforts to shield mortgage defrauders from prosecution, and the appointment of an endless roster of former Goldman, Sachs executives and lobbyists. He’s brought the nation to a full-on Cold War and a covert hot war with Iran, on the brink of far greater hostilities. He has made the U.S. as subservient as ever to the destructive agenda of the right-wing Israeli government. His support for some of the Arab world’s most repressive regimes is as strong as ever.
“Most of all, America’s National Security State, its Surveillance State, and its posture of endless war is more robust than ever before. The nation suffers from what National Journal‘s Michael Hirsh just christened “Obama’s Romance with the CIA.” He has created what The Washington Post just dubbed “a vast drone/killing operation,” all behind an impenetrable wall of secrecy and without a shred of oversight. Obama’s steadfast devotion to what Dana Priest and William Arkin called “Top Secret America” has severe domestic repercussions as well, building up vast debt and deficits in the name of militarism that create the pretext for the “austerity” measures which the Washington class (including Obama) is plotting to impose on America’s middle and lower classes.
“The simple fact is that progressives are supporting a candidate for President who has done all of that -- things liberalism has long held to be pernicious. …
“The parallel reality -- the undeniable fact -- is that all of these listed heinous views and actions from Barack Obama have been vehemently opposed and condemned by Ron Paul… …Paul’s candidacy forces progressives to face the hideous positions and actions of their candidate, of the person they want to empower for another four years.”
Comments
If you watch Congressman
— Jan 13, 2012
If you watch Congressman Paul, whenever he speaks to an issue he clearly consults with his guiding principles, not political expediency. Even though he may disagree with others' views, his libertarian unswerving devotion to liberty informs his response. This is not a politician we need fear will hide his actions behind lies or obfuscation. This is a man of reason and integrity.
A friend of mine
— Jan 14, 2012
A friend of mine who is considering voting for RP recently said that one should not vote for anybody if they don't agree with their platform - which seems reasonable enough. But I thought to myself, better to vote for somebody who you trust and is honorable - even if you don't agree with everything he stands for - than to vote for somebody who seems to represent you perfectly but is serving another master.
Principled and honest is more important to our country than anything else at this point.
"Anybody who truly values
— Jan 24, 2012
"Anybody who truly values peace should register Republican and vote for RP. Forget your gay marriage rights, your healthcare, your college education. Save lives first! We'll work the rest of it out after we've made the world a significantly safer place to be. "
So what you are saying is that we should vote for Ron Paul and defer those things, most likely for the rest of our lifetimes?
When we don't support gay marriage that means that we DO support people who have spent their lives together not being able to be with each other when they die, just to name one of many benefits straight married people have that gay people are denied.
When we don't support healthcare we DO support the fact that 49.9 million people are uninsuresd and not tacking one of the primary sources of debt in our government(or tackling it such that many, many people die needlessly).
When we don 't support college education we DO support America's growing education gap.
Sorry, but the United States Ron Paul is selling isn't something I can get behind that much. I can't get behind a nation where the place where I grew up would be known as Bombingham even to this day(because, you know, the civil rights acts were interfering with states rights). Or where we have entire states that are basically theocracies with democratic window dressing(because if people want to realign their laws with their traditional Christian values like stoning people it is a states rights issue). Or states that look like they were pulled out of a Dickens novel(Because if the invisible hand of the market was as fantastic as a regulator it is claimed then 19th century England was a paradise. Right?).
History has taught us, over and over again, what the individual states will try even with a strong central government. I don't even want to consider what they will get away with if there isn't one.
P.S.- I'll just leave this here.
http://www.cswnet.com/~menamc/langston.htm
Would he were fatter! But I fear him not:
Yet if my name were liable to fear,
I do not know the man I should avoid
So soon as that spare Cassius. He reads much;
He is a great observer
decentralize for freedom
— Jan 24, 2012
Hey Cassisus.
Well, I just am coming from such a different place with all of this. My biggest concern right now is the war machine and the things which are taking place that are closing down our country. The NDAA, SOPA, the president taking as his privilege to assassinate American citizens without due process. I mean, its just surreal. I never thought that I would see my country doing these things.
So to me, if the individual doesn't even have a right to a trial, then all the other rights that we have are very much in jeopardy.
How many millions of Iraqi's have died needlessly because of for-profit war?
But here's the thing - what I believe is happening in both foreign and domestic policy, you have the same people operating. And basically that's the power elite. This is what I found out about marriage for example - marriage was never a function of the government until whites and blacks started to marry each other. Suddenly one needed a license to get married. So what you have is a situation were government is used as a tool for social control by whoever were the powerful people in the country at the time. Of course, they didn't admit that's why they were doing it. They provided some sort of excuse about why it was necessary for us to gain permission from them that sounded reasonable. So many years later, we don't even question it - its weaved into the fabric of our world. We take it for granted that its necessary without ever questioning it.
So when I think about gay marriage, my thought goes to this place - let's relinquish our need to ask permission of the government to do any of the things that we would like to do in our lives. I support gay marriage. Don't let anybody stop you from doing what your heart is called to do. Privatize it - its a spiritual institution and the government should keep their noses out of it.
I know the arguments for making it a social and political issue, of course, and I sympathize. But as long as we keep looking to a centralized authority to solve all the problems that we have, then what we end up with is tyranny. And status quo.
My answer is decentralize. We need to get our focus back to the local community where people are free to have the place that they live in be reflective of their values. If we are trying to make the whole world homegenous, in one instant that impulse for sameness can serve us, and in the next it will be used to curtail our individuality.
I believe in the rights of the individual states to go their own direction because with diversity comes freedom and with freedom comes far more opportunities for the fullness of human expression. There will be some states that will be less friendly to gays than others. Far easier to have influence when you are not trying to get an entire nation to do your bidding. More opportunities for freedom, and less opportunities for abuse.
That's how I see things.
So you see, I want what you want, I just have a different idea of how to go about it. And I have to tell you that the powers that be who are controlling our world are the primary advocates of centralization - the bankers and the corporations. The more centralized the power, the fewer people they have to directly control in order to control the rest of us. They are glad to have us fighting about all kinds of social issues while they quietly take over every inch of our lives.
I should just tell you that I have come from the left politically most of my life. Its only been in the past few years that I have come to a different perspective. And what I have discovered is that the power elite creates the divide between the left and the right. So I have learned to not buy into any ideas that seem to be about the left or the right. There's a middle path which brings the solution and it usually involves getting the government out of the way.
On Decentralization
— Jan 26, 2012
Ok.
Let's say that we decentralize to the state level. No US involvement in other countries, no federal departments, nothing.
I have a laundry list of worries I have about that but I'll just stick to one.
How, exactly, do we prevent a replay of business in the 19th century? RIght now I can think of one, maybe two states that can seriously stand up to any of the Fortune 500 companies. You are saying that the chance that the government would stand up for the people in the face of mega corporations is close to 0.
I am saying that without the government the chances we could stand up to mega corporations is precisely 0. We have already found out exactly what happens without rigorous anti trust regulation at the federal level. You get something very similar to what we have now(because the regulations have either been removed as the case of Glass Stegall or not enforced).
That's where I am coming from. From what you have written you seem to believe(and please correct me if I am misunderstanding your position) that any action on the federal level(outside of an extremely small number of things such as a token national defense) is either useless or malicious and we would all be better off without it.
I, however, think that action on the federal level not only can be useful but is essential for a number of objectives which simply can't be achieved at a local level(business regulation, manufacturing of complex goods, some types of medical care are just a few examples). I think that we have great potential as a nation and as a species but we have to work together on a mind bogglingly large scale in order to address the problems that face us.
Would he were fatter! But I fear him not:
Yet if my name were liable to fear,
I do not know the man I should avoid
So soon as that spare Cassius. He reads much;
He is a great observer
Re: On Decentralization
— Jan 26, 2012
Well not a token defense. A strong defense. I kinda grew out of my naivete about this being a peaceful world. It was a girl thing. lol! Anyway, a strong defense which is easier to do if we aren't stretched around the world.
In terms of standing up to the mega corporations the biggest problem that we have now is that the corporations own the Congress. This is what I mean by centralization of power. They only have to influence 500 people instead of having to impact the legislators of every single state.
I'll have to look for it and then send you the link. There was this amazing organization that had put together a video series showing how all of the major corporations had funded both candidates in almost every single Congressional race - certainly the most important ones. Very specific names, dates, and amounts of money. I mean, we get that this is happening, but they just did such an outstanding job of showing how it was done. It made you quit worrying about the left vs. right thing because the corporations own both the Dems and the Reps.
This organization's goal was to put up candidates who pledge to not take money from the corporations and would abide by the Constitution. And then secondly their focus was to turn the IRS on to the corporations which was the original intention for the IRS. Money was to come from them, not from the income of people. This is a grassroots organization. Really doing good work to expose the corruption.
Anyway, the point is that its because the Congress is doing things that it was not intended to do that that the corporations have taken control. The more things they do, the more the corporations can influence what happens.
Regarding the anti-trust laws, I have learned that despite what its called, it actually has the opposite effect. It actually ensures that the corporations have a monopoly. Just like the Patriot Act violates all of our sacred rights. Its pretty much the opposite of what they say.
Now, in this moment, I can't prove it about the anti-trust laws - its not a subject I've read up on. But this is information that comes from a source that I have come to trust. Tom Woods - he's a Libertarian. Fiscal conservative. Started out really with the right politically, but then began to realize that the Republican party was pretty much evil. So he can't get behind their whole war machine thing. He's a historian and an economist, writer. Quite famous these days. Speaks out for peace and freedom. Has no love of corporations - none at all. Free market, yes. Corporations - evil.
What he says corroborates all the research I've been doing these last few years. Basically we find out that the corporations are really the owners of the government and have been for a very long time. They control the media to such an extent that the truth about pretty much nothing is really brought out.
They also took control of the content of education, and in particular history, economics, political science - so that they could push their agenda. This is the one that upset me the most. It sounds so wonderful right - this idea that we have this national education - it sounds like we're making sure that the whole nation is getting a good education. Actually what happened is quite the opposite. We're way below the top in terms of education in our country. And we're all getting the same education - the propaganda that the corporations sell. The Ford Foundation and the Gugenheim Foundation in particular took control of it.
So its a mess because the very people who are creating all this evil have taken control of the information. It makes it very difficult to figure out what's going on. I mean, you would think that anti-trust legislation would protect you, right? But they are masters of deception. And again, I just have to say that I used to be aligned with the Left politically but after seeing how many of them have sold their souls to the corporations, I just don't believe any of them.
So its only malicious because of who's behind it. I mean, if we could trust our Congress to do the right thing, but we just have to grow up and forget about that.
The most important recognition that comes from our American heritage is that power corrupts. The whole point of setting our country up where each state was to be dominant over the Fed was to protect us from exactly the kind of nonsense that we're dealing with today. What the corporations have done is convinced us that anybody who is for States rights is a racist, Confederate flag waving, bible thumper. Its not like that at all.
Here's a video of Tom Woods - this is just a joke thing, but it gives you a flavor of his sense of humor and his viewpoint.
